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Honors College

Spring 2019

Variations in Media Framing of U.S.-Cuba Policy

Anna Foster University of Maine

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VARIATIONS IN MEDIA FRAMING OF U.S.-CUBA POLICY

by

Anna Foster

A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for a Degree with Honors (International Affairs)

The Honors College

University of Maine

May 2019

Advisory Committee: Mark Brewer, Professor of Political Science and Preceptor in the Honors College, Advisor Christine Beitl, Associate Professor of Anthropology Melissa Ladenheim, Associate Dean of the Honors College Maria Sandweiss, Lecturer in Spanish James Warhola, Professor of Political Science

© 2019 Anna K. Foster All Rights Reserved

ABSTRACT

This thesis looks at the usage of media framing in regard to Obama’s and

Trump’s U.S.-Cuban policy. It analyzes articles from the New York Times and the

Miami Herald and how they used framing techniques to present Obama’s 2016 opening of relations with Cuba, and Trump’s 2017 change in policy. After reading through the articles, content analysis was used in order to quantify the trends found in the framing techniques used by both papers. The findings of this paper show two very different approaches to both policies, despite many similarities in the framing techniques used by the New York Times and the Miami Herald. These findings were then analyzed to understand how and why the papers chose to present the policies the way they do. Using content analysis, the articles were then analyzed in order to identify trends in the usage of media framing by both papers. This research led to the findings that the Miami Herald and the New York Times presented two very different perspectives in regard to Obama and Trump’s change in policy. The Miami Herald presented a more positive perspective of Trump’s policy change, while the New York

Times was more supportive of Obama’s change and against Trump’s new policy.

These two perspectives are key in shaping the opinions of the audience of both audiences and due to the large readership of both papers, likely have impacted millions of Americans, and their opinions on U.S.-Cuba policy ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

First of all, I would like to thank Dr. Mark Brewer for taking on this project.

Without him this thesis would not exist. I’d like to thank you for believing in me and pushing me to do the best work I can. I’d also like to thank Dr. Robert Glover, you advocated me throughout my time working on this project, and I would not have made it through this process without him. To Kathleen Brown, I’d like to thank you for providing me with endless support and laughs. You kept me sane this year and for that I owe you the world. To Helene, Emily, Aleida, and the rest of my Cuban family, thank you for teaching me what is most important in life: passion, happiness, and family. You all inspire me to pursue the truth every day. I’d also like to thank Kim

Wallace, for believing in me and encouraging throughout my time working on my thesis. Finally, I’d like to thank my parents. You’ve always been my biggest fans and

I would not be where I am today without you. You were the only people who didn’t laugh when I told you that I wanted to go abroad to Cuba and this thesis would not exist without you. Your support means the world to me. You’ve both taught me that life is too short to be anything but curious, passionate, and fearless. I love you both more than I could ever express.

iv TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 1: Introduction 1

Purpose of Thesis 3

Why my Thesis Topic 4

Chapter 2: Journalistic Framing 6

Origins 6

Media Framing 6

Context within Political Science 11

Chapter 3: The U.S. and Cuba 16

History of the U.S. in Pre-Revolutionary Cuba 16

Castro’s rise to power 18

John F. Kennedy 19

Lyndon B. Johnson and Jimmy Carter 20

Ronald Reagan 21

George H.W. Bush 22

Bill Clinton 24

George W. Bush 25

State of U.S. Cuba Policy and Obama’s first term 27

Obama’s Second Term 28

The original statement of changes 30

Presidential Policy Implementation 20

Trump’s Cuba Policy 33

Role of Cuban-Americans in election 33

Original Statement 34

v New Policy Implementation 35

Chapter 4: Methodology 38

Chapter 5: Analysis: Framing U.S.-Cuba Policy 44

Usage of Media Frames 47

Morality of the Cuban Government 48

Human Interest Framing 52

Public Opinion Framing: 55

Consequence Framing 60

Obama’s Policy- Consequence Framing: 64

Chapter 6: Discussion and Conclusion 67

Works Cited 74

Appendix 77

Author’s Biography 80

vi LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

Table 3.1: Obama Policy Implementation 32

Table 3.2: Trump Policy Implementation 36

Table 5.1: Frequency of Articles (Obama 2016 and Trump 2017) 44

Table 5.2: Frequency of Articles (Obama, 2014) 45

Figure 5.1: Article Titles as Indicators 45

Table 5.3: Cuban Government Descriptors (Obama) 49

Table 5.4: Cuban Government Descriptors (Trump) 49

Figure 5.2: Cuban Government Descriptors (Frequency %) 51

Figure 5.3: Frequency of Gov. Descriptors by Paperand Administration 51

Table 5.5: Frequency of Opinion Articles 56

Table 5.6 New York Times Opinion Article Titles 56

Table 5.7: Miami Herald Opinion Article Titles (Obama 2016) 57

Table 5.8: Miami Herald Opinion Article Titles (Trump 2017) 58

Figure 5.4: Consequence Framing, New York Times (Trump 2017) 61

Figure 5.5: Consequence Framing, Miami Herald (Trump 2017) 63

Figure 5.6: Consequence Framing, Miami Herald (Obama 2016) 64

vii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

The U.S. has had a long and complicated relationship with the island of Cuba.

Since the end of the Cuban Revolution, when Fidel Castro first came to power, the

U.S. has continued to implement restrictive policies against the island of Cuba. The

Foreign Assistance Act in 1961 allowed the president to enact the Cuban Embargo, and since then there have been numerous acts passed, through executive orders and

Congress, to strengthen the U.S. stance against Cuba, specifically restricting economic and diplomatic relationships between the two countries. This trend continued until 2008, with the election of Barack Obama.

When Obama first came into office, he began to create slow incremental changes to U.S.-Cuba policy. Obama’s policy marked the first significant attempt to re-establish relations with Cuba since the Cuban Revolution. Starting in 2009, Obama began to open economic relations with Cuba. This change came when he allowed for remittances to be sent to the island and encouraged family travel. The year 2014 marked the beginning of Obama’s attempts to thaw relations with Cuba. It was at this point that Obama began talks with Castro in regard to the re-establishment of diplomatic and economic relations. Eventually, in 2016, Obama released a groundbreaking policy re-establishing diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Cuba and allowing for greater travel to Cuba. This policy, entitled “United States-Cuba

Normalization,” was put in place by executive order and looked to accomplish four overarching goals. These goals were to enhance the security of U.S. citizens nationally and internationally, enhance the Cuban economy with greater opportunities for the Cuban people, increase respect for individual rights within Cuba, and integrate

1 Cuba into international and regional systems (such as the Organization of American

States).

One of the concerns that supporters of Obama’s policy had was the ability of the next president to dismantle his new Cuba policy due to the fact that it was put in place by executive order. This fear was further realized throughout the 2016 elections.

With two Cuban-American candidates running in the primary, Ted Cruz and Marco

Rubio, as well as Jeb Bush who had previously been Governor of Florida, Cuban-

American voters became a key population. Because of this, many Republican candidates came out in support of reversing Obama’s Cuba policy. Donald Trump was no different. Throughout his time on the campaign trail, Trump promised to dismantle Obama’s new Cuba policy, often calling it a “bad deal.”

In June of 2017, the same year that he was inaugurated, Trump officially announced his Cuba policy entitled, “Strengthening the Policy of the United States

Toward Cuba.” This policy dismantled parts of the policy put in place by Obama, creating restrictions on travel to Cuba, and ending the open diplomatic relations that had existed under Obama. This policy was presented as an important step in helping to create a more democratic Cuba and outlined five changes. These changes were, ending economic practices that involve the Cuban government, reinstating the ban on tourism in Cuba, supporting the economic embargo, increasing efforts to expand free press, internet, etc. and the discontinuation of the “Wet Foot, Dry Foot” policy, a policy that allowed for Cuban immigrants to gain permanent residency in the U.S. after only one year of living there.

With such drastic changes in a short period of time, there was widespread coverage of the issue. There were definite divides in how people felt about both

Obama’s policy and Trump’s policy. This leads to the following question: how have

2 two newspapers’ used media framing to present Obama and Trump’s U.S.-Cuba policy, and within these presentations how and why does variation occur?

My thesis will examine two specific examples of media coverage, from the

New York Times and Miami Herald. It will look at articles published one day before and 7 days after Obama released his policy in 2016 and the same time frame surrounding Trump’s policy release in 2017. These articles will then be analyzed for media framing trends and techniques and then I will draw comparisons between the two newspapers’ usage of media framing.

Purpose of Thesis

Like all political issues, the reporting of the changes in U.S.-Cuba policy plays a key role in the average Americans’ understanding of these policies as well as the overarching U.S.-Cuba relationship. Framing helps guide public perception, not only in how the public thinks about something, but how much they think about it as well. If an issue is presented more frequently, the public is more likely to think about it and view it as an important issue. Understanding how the media has framed the changes in the two policies will allow a greater understanding of how the population of the U.S. understands the policies and U.S.-Cuba relations. Therefore, the purpose of this thesis will be to look for trends within the framing of these policies, as well as the frequency of these reports in order to consider the impacts they might have on public opinion of

U.S.-Cuba policy.

This thesis will also more specifically consider how these framing techniques vary between different news sources. Not only will it consider how framing varies between different sources but also what affects media frames, specifically within the field of political science. This thesis will take into consideration what factors shape

3 the agenda for newspapers, and how these play into the framing that different organizations use. For example, my research will consider the populations in the area where the papers are published, and the general political stance of the papers, and how this affects the frames they chose to use, and how they utilize these frames.

This thesis will build on the previous research and theory surrounding media framing and why topics are presented in certain ways. I will take this research and apply it to these two specific cases in order to gain a greater understanding of the implications of framing in the case of U.S.-Cuba policy and in what ways this framing varies between sources.

Why my Thesis Topic

In the fall of 2017, I was living in Havana, Cuba when Trump's new policy was implemented by the Departments of State, Treasury, and Commerce. The policy created new restrictions in regard to what could enter and exit the country, as well as limiting where Americans could stay while in Cuba. During this period, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out exactly what the change in policy meant for me, without having to read the entirety of the policy. The news is the translator for a lot of

Americans, including me. The way that the news presented the policy greatly affected my understanding of what was happening. It also impacted how the people around me understood the same changes. Everyone had a slightly different understanding of the changes based on which sources they used to understand the policy. This led to greater confusion and difficulty in understanding the truth of the situation. This is a perfect example of how the media and media framing plays into the everyday lives of

Americans trying to understand these policies and is a key reason why I am interested in exploring this topic.

4 One of my other realizations during my time living in Cuba is the general misunderstanding of Cuba, especially how the Cuban government and economy function. My understanding of the island of Cuba came from what I read and what I saw on the news. While living in Cuba I realized that a lot of what I had learned was either skewed or incorrect. This led to my interest in learning more about how the news decides to present issues, and why they choose to do it in certain ways. This led to my eventual discovery of framing techniques, and how framing impacts the news we receive every day.

My thesis topic is a combination of all of these interests. I wanted to be able to understand why the public thinks about Cuba and U.S.-Cuban relations in the way they do, and why there are so many misconceptions about Cuba in the U.S. My question allows me to consider how the media presents U.S.-Cuba policy and also allows me to understand, on some level, why people in the U.S. have the perspective they do about Cuba, which is why I decided to pursue this topic. However, in order to better understand how the media plays a role in the public perception of the U.S. and

Cuba, and more specifically the two policies created by Obama and Trump, it is important to have a general understanding of the history of U.S.-Cuban relations as well as what exactly media framing is.

5 CHAPTER 2: JOURNALISTIC FRAMING

Origins

The idea of framing was first introduced by Erving Goffman (1974) in his work “Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience.” Goffman states that “when the individual in our Western society recognizes a particular event, he tends, whatever else he does, to imply in this response (and in effect employ) one or more frameworks or schemata of interpretation” (Goffman 1974, 21). No matter what the event, every individual will comprehend it somewhat differently due to this idea framework or “schemata of interpretation.” And that is the idea of framing.

Goffman outlines two major types of frameworks, natural and social. Natural frameworks are utilized in situations where “occurrences [are] seen as unoriented, unanimated, unguided, ‘purely physical.’ Such unguided events are understood to be due totally, from start to finish, to ‘natural’ determinants” (Goffman 1974, 22).

Goffman gives the example of weather as being a concept that employs a natural framework, due to it being completely based on these “natural determinants.” Within natural frameworks, there are no actors or outside forces guiding the outcome. In contrast, social frameworks are used to create “understanding for events that incorporate the will, aim, and controlling effort of an intelligence, a live agency, the chief one being the human being” (Goffman 1974, 22). The crucial difference between these two frames is outside motive or intent.

Media Framing

Goffman’s theory of framework also applies to the realm of news. Framing in the world of news is more commonly known as “media framing.” Within media

6 framing, the majority of the frames fall within social frameworks. Media framing is complicated in its nature due to the fact that there is no specific list of frames set.

Framing looks at trends within articles and tries to identify how these trends relate to the way that issues are presented. Within framing there can be a larger more overarching frame that then breaks down into more specific frames that relate specifically to the issue being presented. While different frames use different techniques, one common factor is that all frames are used to create a context for the audience. The specific framing techniques used in this thesis will be discussed later on in the chapter.

According to Sigurd Allern (2014)“a complicating factor in framing analysis, demonstrated in the vast literature on the subject, lies both in the multiple types of frames and the shifting levels of analysis. One of the dangers (and weaknesses) of framing analysis is the subjective variety of what may be called a “frame,” depending on the researcher’s own interests and interpretations,” (Allern 2014, 93). However

Allern also highlights the importance of framing stating that, “frames involve implicit information between the lines; they establish a context for the interpretation of a news story,” and “through organized and socially shared frames, the news story becomes familiar, recognizable, and therefore easier to interpret,” (Allern 2014, 93).

Mark Boukes (2014) states that the majority of people agree with “the view that frames place ‘an emphasis in salience of certain aspects of a topic,’” and that

“emphasizing a particular aspect of a topic with a news frame makes this element more noticeable, meaningful, or memorable and therefore more accessible and applicable in audience interpretations of the topic. This, in turn, may influence the overall attitude toward the topic” (Boukes 2014, 122).

7 According to Robert Entman (1991), “frames reside in specific properties of the news narrative that encourage those perceiving and thinking about events to develop particular understandings of them.” These frames used by the media “are constructed from and embodied in the keywords, metaphors, concepts, symbols, and visual images emphasized in a news narrative,” (Entman 1991, 7). The media is able to use “repetition, placement and reinforcing associations,” in order to present events and issues in a very particular and directed way. (Entman, 1991, 7) This is important to understand because, “news organizations shape their reports to elicit favorable reactions from readers and viewers,” and the frames given to news stories, “also affect[s] the rhetoric and actions of political elites,” (Entman 1991, 7).

Within media framing, the first categorization comes from the distinction of episodic and thematic framing. Episodic framing is utilized when explaining one specific event or story. According to Kimberly Gross (2008), “Episodic frames present an issue by offering a specific example, case study, or event oriented report,”

(Gross 2008, 171). Episodic framing is very specific and only focuses on one particular issue, story or example. In contrast, thematic framing deals with more overarching themes. Gross describes thematic framing as a frame that “place issues into a broader context,” (Gross 2008, 171). Gross utilizes the issue of unemployment as an example to clarify the difference between the two frames. She says that with episodic framing, would present the issue of unemployment by presenting the story of one specific unemployed person, while with thematic framing the story would present the issue of unemployment more generally, for example offering statistics or commentary about unemployment from economists (Gross 2008). Almost all other frames then fall under one of these two, episodic or thematic framing.

8 These two overarching frames break down into a variety of specific types of frames. Entman (1991) outlines five major techniques used within media framing.

The first major technique is the usage of morality which is a form of thematic framing. The point of morality framing is to present an issue or policy as moral or immoral. By appealing to the audience’s morality, the author is able to sway public opinion one way or another. For example, if a newspaper prints an article that presents a policy as a positive change to society, or of good moral standing, the audience is more likely to support that policy.

A second popular framing technique is the usage of “human interest framing,”

(Entman 1991). Human interest framing is a perfect example of episodic framing.

This frame focuses on the usage of personal stories in order to present a story a certain way. Human interest framing appeals to the audience by presenting the consequences of something on one specific person. It falls under the category of episodic framing because it uses one specific perspective and story.

Conflict and consequence frames are also commonly used (Entman 1991).

Conflict framing is frequently used to highlight how the issue is playing out between two parties and highlights the issues from the perspective of the division between the two groups (usually political parties). In contrast consequence framing can be used to affect how the public understands the outcomes of something such as a policy change.

Consequence framing looks specifically at the outcomes of an issue or policy. For example, if somebody is talking about immigration policy, they could discuss the implications on a wall from the perspective of how it would affect U.S. citizens living on the border, and this would be an example of consequence framing.

Finally, responsibility framing is used in order to give the public someone or something to blame either for the issue or the solution to the issue (Entman 1991).

9 Responsibility framing is all about who society contributes social problems to. For example, if we are looking at health care, from a responsibility framing point of view, the question would be, who does society blame for problems in health care, the patients, the healthcare organization, or the government. Media can help guide the public’s view of who is responsible for social issues based on who they frame as the issue within responsibility framing.

Within each of these 5 framing techniques, morality, conflict and consequence, responsibility, and human interest, there are more specific factors and considerations. For example, Entman explains that the morality frame can be better understood by looking at “four separate (though related), salient aspects of the text...

[the] images that portrayed responsibility for the action, or agency; that encouraged or encouraged or discouraged identification with those directly affected by the act; that advanced a particular categorization of the act; and that stimulated or suppressed broad generalization from the act.” (Entman 1991, 11) That is part of what makes media framing so complex. There are a variety of layers to every type of frame, and each frame has a wide range of factors and characteristics that create it.

Within the analysis of the articles looked at in this thesis these framing techniques break down into the following more specific frames. Human interest framing looks at the usage of Cuban stories in reaction to Obama and Trump’s policies. Consequence framing more specifically highlights which groups are being affected by the policy changes, and

In Bouke’s article, he analyzes the reaction of the public to a variety of news stories, each using a different amount of human-interest framing. Human interest as defined by Entman is a frame that utilizes personalized stories when reporting on a topic or issue. Bouke's realizes that personalized stories, as seen in human interest

10 framing, reaches a wide audience and creates a personal connection to the audience.

This allows for greater revenue as well as a greater impact on public opinion.

Context within Political Science

Many of the frames that exist today directly impact the realm of political science as well. According to Chris Haynes (2016), “given that frames help individuals make sense of the world, it is no surprise that social movement organizations, political elites, and other relevant actors try to influence the frames that make it into public discourse,” (Haynes 2016, 17). The usage of media framing is key to the public's understanding of issues, and due to this it is often a race for groups to frame an issue first. Haynes states that, “Democratic and Republican Party elites often vie to be the first to frame a particular issue, since they perceive that such frames are more likely to stick in the public’s mind,” (Haynes 2016, 18).

In political science, there are a variety of reasons to look at media framing.

Within countries like the United States, democracy exists as an instrument to create government policies and procedures that are driven by the demands of the people.

Understanding how the media frames issues and how this affects public opinion is one of the keys to understanding why changes are made within government policies.

This concept is also presented within the agenda-setting theory. Agenda setting theory is often coupled with the idea of framing, especially media framing.

However, agenda-setting theory is its own distinct theory. Maxwell McCombs and

Donald Shaw (1972) first presented the idea of agenda setting in 1972, stating that “in choosing and displaying news, editors, newsroom staff, and broadcasters play an important part in shaping political reality,” (McCombs and Shaw, 1972, 177). The purpose of agenda setting theory is to understand exactly how the media, and its

11 presentation of issues, impacts the political world. According to McCombs and Shaw,

“the mass media set the agenda for each political campaign, influencing the salience of attitudes toward the political issues,” (McCombs and Shaw 1972, 177). That being said, it is important to understand that agenda setting is not about telling people what to think, “it’s telling [its] readers what to think about,” (McCombs and Shaw

1972, 177).

The usage of human-interest framing, as discussed with the example of

Boukes, is a perfect example of how frames can play a key role in politics. In one experiment, Boukes (2014) looks at how one mother’s personal story can affect overarching political opinion. Boukes used Dutch news sources to present three different stories with varying levels of personal experiences strewn throughout. The story presented was that there was a new “health care policy reform proposed by the national government. The proposed plan’s aim was to reduce government spending in the public health sector by driving back the use of medicine against mental disorders such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) among children and adolescents; parents should either buy these themselves, or they should look for other solutions,” (Boukes 2014, 126).

There were three different stories presented, two of which talked generally about children and the impact of the hypothetical health care policy reform, and then one that was presented with a “human interest frame.” In this version of the news story “the mother spoke in personal terms, raised her voice, and obviously was indignant and angry that the government planned to reduce spending on her son’s medicines. The voice-over in this strong human-interest frame item talked about her son specifically,” (Boukes 2014, 127). After watching the three stories, people were asked to assess their reactions.

12 The experiment was looking at two very specific indicators, who did the population believe was to blame, and what was the general attitude towards the government's plan. The conclusion of the experiment according to Boukes was that

“first, human interest framing of a news item caused attribution of responsibility to the government. Second, [the] attribution of responsibility to the government decreased support for the government’s plan to cut the budget on children’s ADHD medication. In a nutshell, this means that human interest framing indirectly affected people’s political attitudes via the way they attributed responsibility of a problem.”

(Boukes 2014, 131).

This experiment is just one example of how media framing can play a role in the attitudes of a population, specifically within the realm of government and government policy. There are many aspects of this which also apply to U.S. policy. A wide variety of studies have been done to figure out how exactly media framing impacts public policy, including in the U.S. Haynes argues, “that while many forces shape opinion on immigration, the framing of policy information plays an integral role,” (Haynes 2016, 16). Haynes gives the example of thematic framing, stating that stories “that focus [es] on more general trends” can allow for greater support for policies such as the DREAM Act as opposed to episodic frames that would only focus on one particular case (Haynes 2016, 31).

Haynes gives the example of an episodic story, seen in the Washington Post, in comparison to an impersonal story presented a more conservative media source. He states that “while episodic news coverage on immigration tends to focus on stories of particular individuals or families, thematic news coverage tends to focus on statistics like numbers of border apprehensions and deportations,” and in Hayne’s opinion thematic framing can be more successful within the case of the DREAM Act (Haynes

13 2016, 20). That being said, there are other cases, such as with Boukes and the case of the mother’s story about her son, that are more successful in convincing the audience to support a policy by using episodic framing. All of this to say that every policy and political issue can benefit from a different type of framing, which is why there can be so much variation in how issues are presented.

One of the issues of framing is just how vast and abstract it can be. Amber

Boydstun states that “understanding, for a given issue, what frames are used by politicians, the media, and the voting public to communicate about it, is an enormous challenge, due to the dynamic and creative nature of language and the growing volume of data in which frames appear and develop over time,” (Boydstun 2013, 1).

However Boydstun breaks down the analysis for frames into two parts. She calls the first step of frame analysis, “frame discovery.” In frame discovery the analyzer

“identifies the catalogue of frames in a political discourse about a particular issue,”

(Boydstun 2013, 1). This leads to the second step which she identifies as “frame analysis” in which the analyzer identifies trends within articles in order to in order to

“reveal patterns in frame usage,” (Boydstun 2013, 1).

Similar to how Entman describes the breakdown of each frame, Boydstun also explores how overarching frames can be broken down into even more specific categories by the author within the field of political science. After outlining 15 overarching framing techniques, Boydstun states that “researchers may choose to employ only these categories as listed here, or they could also nest issue-specific frames (or arguments) within each category,” (Boydstun 2013, 5). Boydstun uses the example of what she identifies as the “fairness and equality frame.” This frame outlines “equality or inequality with which laws, punishment, rewards, and resources are applied or distributed among individuals or groups. Also, the balance between the

14 rights or interests of one individual or group compared to another individual or group,” (Boydstun 2013, 4). Boydstun then says that within this frame an author dealing with capital punishment could use what she calls an “innocence” frame.

While this fits into the fairness and equality frame, it is even more specific and is just one of many subcategories that could exist. Boydstun says that the best way to deal with the infinite possibilities of frames is to identify the overarching frame, and then break it down into the subcategories or what she calls “nest issue-specific frames.”

Within Cuba policy media framing plays a key role, and like all other policy issue a wide variety of general and “nest-issue specific frames” can exist. Within the past ten years, since Barack Obama became president, Cuba policy has gone through extreme reforms. These changes have been accompanied by extensive news coverage.

Framing plays a role in how Americans understand these policy changes as well as helping to shape how they think, and how much they think, about Cuba-U.S. relations.

15 CHAPTER 3: THE U.S. AND CUBA

History of the U.S. in Pre-Revolutionary Cuba

The U.S. and Cuba have had a long and complicated relationship, stemming back all the way to the 1800s when Cuba was still a Spanish colony. In April 1898 the

Spanish-American War broke out after the USS Maine exploded in Havana, Cuba in

February of the same year. After the explosion of the Maine, the U.S. joined Cuba’s fight for independence from Spain. Eventually, the Treaty of Paris was signed in

December of 1898 ending the Spanish American War. This led to the U.S. obtaining control of Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Guam, and Cuba.

The U.S. maintained control of Cuba until 1902 when Tomas Estrada Palma was elected the first president of Cuba. However, the year before, the Platt

Amendment was put into place, giving seven requirements that needed to be met in order to have the U.S. government withdraw from Cuba. Some of these requirements included Cuba not entering into treaties with other foreign governments, the continued ability of the U.S. to intervene in Cuban affairs if necessary, and land being given to the United States for military purposes. The Platt Amendment gave an extreme economic and political advantage to the United States. Despite the U.S. withdrawing in 1902, they continued to hold an extreme amount of power within

Cuba due to the Platt Amendment.

One of the aforementioned economic advantages of the Platt Amendment had to do with the growing sugar industry in Cuba. According to Cesar Ayala (1999)

“incorporation of Cuba into the U.S. tariff system on preferential terms favored rapid expansion of the sugar industry. In 1903 the United States granted a 20 percent reduction on import duties on Cuban sugar,” (Ayala 1999, 203). While this caused a

16 massive expansion in sugar production in Cuba, it also allowed for the U.S. to get a large percentage of its sugar from Cuba at a reduced price. Furthermore, Ayala states that “within a short time after U.S. occupation of the island, U.S. citizens owned a larger share of the sugar industry than either Cubans or Spaniards,” meaning that the entity who was benefiting from, in all aspects, the boom in the sugar industry was the

U.S.

After Palma stepped down as president in 1906, the U.S. re-entered Cuba. The end of Palma’s presidency came after an uprising led by José Miguel Gómez. Gómez was elected to the presidency three years later in 1909. While the governments in

Cuba were often corrupt, the government was relatively stable for the next 20 years until Fulgencio Batista staged a coup d’état that overthrew the president at the time,

Gerardo Machado.

Fulgencio Batista had first been president of Cuba in 1940, and after his four- year term he stepped down as president. He then moved to Florida for four years before returning to Cuba to become a member of the Cuban Senate until 1952 when he ran for president a second time. However, before the elections were officially held

Batista staged a military overthrow of the government and claimed the presidential office for himself in March of 1952.

After the initial overthrow of the government, the U.S. was unwilling to recognize the Batista government. However the U.S. Secretary of State, Dean

Acheson, eventually wrote to President Harry Truman stating that, “Under these circumstances I believe it would be detrimental to the special relations that this country has with Cuba to hold up [diplomatic] recognition any longer” especially due to “our very special position in Cuba which includes heavy capital investment, enormous international trade, the Nicaro nickel plant operation, the Guantánamo

17 Naval Base, three armed services missions and the recent signing of a bilateral military assistance agreement which requires implementation,” (J. Calhoun 2013,

20). This led to the eventual recognition of the Cuban government in late March of

1952, the same month that Batista had come into power.

As stated by Acheson, the U.S. had a large investment in Cuba at that time.

Despite the importance of Cuba to the U.S, changes under Batista’s presidency led to a different U.S.-Cuba relationship. Under Batista, the U.S. gave up there right to intervene in Cuban affairs and changed the sugar quota that had been in place which gave the U.S. an advantage in trade with Cuba. Eventually, in 1958, the U.S. also withdrew all military aid from the country, just a year before Fidel Castro became the

Prime Minister of Cuba.

Castro’s rise to power

On July 26, 1953, Fidel Castro and 165 others attacked the Moncada Barracks in what was the beginning of the Cuban Revolution. They did so in hopes that it would start a nationwide attack on the Batista government. However, they were quickly quashed by the Cuban military and were either killed or put in jail.

Eventually, Fidel Castro was freed from jail and fled to Mexico. Three years later in

1956, Castro and 80 other revolutionaries took a boat, named the Granma, from

Mexico to Cuba. Some of the most notable people on the boat included both Castro brothers, Fidel and Raúl, Che Guevara, a well-known revolutionary who participated in a variety of revolutions across Latin America, and Camilo Cienfuegos, another well-known Cuban revolutionary. The Granma arrived in Cuba on December 2nd,

1956, and the revolutionaries on the boat then made their way to the Sierra Maestra

Mountains in Cuba to regroup and reach out to other revolutionaries throughout Cuba.

18 The Cuban Revolution did not start out as a Communist movement, but rather an attempt to overthrow Batista and get rid of all American control of the island due to the poor economic conditions throughout the island. It was not until 1957 that there was a “change in priorities from the economic to the political” (Cushion 2015, 151).

When the Revolution eventually came to an end in 1959, and Fidel Castro came into power, it was the Communist Party that was the single dominant party set up in the country.

With Fidel Castro as the President of Cuba, there was a drastic change in the relationship between the U.S. and Cuba. At the time Dwight Eisenhower was the president of the United States, and throughout his time in office, Eisenhower continued to sever more ties with Cuba. According to Josh DeWind, “between 1959 and 1962 a complete turnaround took place in the relations between the United States and Cuba, changing from the “ties of singular intimacy” that had characterized the relations between the two countries since the nineteenth century to one of the most contentious relationships of US foreign affairs that took Washington to the brink of nuclear war in October of 1962,” (DeWind 2014, 133). In 1960, Castro nationalized all of the U.S. businesses in Cuba without compensation. This led to the withdrawal of U.S. diplomats from Havana and the end of diplomatic relations between the two countries.

John F. Kennedy

When John F. Kennedy entered the White House in 1961 there was already an extremely complicated relationship between the U.S. and Cuba. When he became president, the Bay of Pigs, a military invasion of Cuba, was already in the works.

Kennedy eventually approved the plan and in April of 1961, 1,400 Cuban exiles who

19 were living in the U.S. invaded Playa Girón. Only three days later, the U.S. withdrew from Cuba. The failure of the Bay of Pigs changed the U.S. approach to Cuba to some extent, but for the most part, the overarching goal remained the same, to overthrow

Castro and his newly established government.

In February 1962, Kennedy officially enacted the Cuban Embargo, stating that

“the importation into the United States of all goods of Cuban origin and all goods imported from or through Cuba” is prohibited, (Proclamation No. 3447). The cited reason for the embargo was, “that the present Government of Cuba is incompatible with the principles and objectives of the Inter-American system; and, in light of the subversive offensive of Sino-Soviet Communism with which the Government of

Cuba is publicly aligned, urged the member states to take those steps that they may consider appropriate for their individual and collective self-defense,” (Proclamation

No. 3447).

Lyndon B. Johnson and Jimmy Carter

Lyndon B. Johnson’s presidency marked one significant change in U.S.-Cuba policy, the enactment of the Cuban Adjustment Act in 1966. The Cuban Adjustment

Act, later revised and titled the “Wet Foot Dry Foot” act allowed for Cubans who enter the U.S. to become permanent residents after only one year of living in the U.S.

This gives Cuban immigrants a significant advantage, as it usually takes a minimum of 5 years of living in the U.S. to gain permanent residency.

The CAA stated that all Cubans who entered the U.S. after January 1, 1959 would be allowed to obtain their residence after one year. Not only did this act as an incentive, but it was also meant to be a political statement regarding the communist government in Cuba. Salim Lamrani (2015) states that the Cuban Adjustment Act was

20 “is unique in the world in that it has as its goals encouraging illegal emigration and politicizing the migration issue in the country’s ideological war against Havana,”

(Lamrani 2015, 121).

The next significant change in U.S. policy did not occur until Jimmy Carter became president in 1977. Carter allowed for the first interaction between Cuban and

U.S. diplomats since the end of the Cuban Revolution.

Although Carter was more than willing to work to normalize relations with

Cuba, there were still a variety of issues that stood in the way of the normalization he hoped for. One of the biggest issues was Cuba’s involvement in the revolutions taking place in Africa. By the end of Carter's presidency, he had been unable to create any significant changes aside from establishing a small enclave of U.S. diplomats in Cuba under the auspices of the Swiss embassy.

Ronald Reagan

When Ronald Reagan first came to power, he wanted to enact a stronger anti-

Cuba policy than what already existed. However, due to the Democratic majority in

Congress, he was unable to make the drastic changes he was looking for. Despite this,

Reagan's presidency was a key time in regard to the development of Cuban-

Americans as a political force in the United States.

According to Patrick Haney and Walt Vanderbush, “key Republicans had been eyeing the Cuban American community as early as 1980. This was especially the case among members of the New Right, whose ideology coincided with the conservatism many Cuban Americans had shown in their past involvement on foreign policy issues,” (Haney and Vanderbush 2005, 34). Reagan’s presidency also marked the establishment of the Cuban American National Foundation. Haney and Vanderbush,

21 argue that CANF was created under the heavy influence of the Reagan administration in an attempt to create political change in regard to Cuba, despite the lack of cooperation from the Congress.

The mission of CANF is “the unwavering commitment to bring freedom, democracy, and respect for human rights to Cuba. Recognizing that sustainable change must come from within, our mission aims to identify independent civil society leaders as agents of change and support their efforts to restore and rebuild Cuban society – a society that has suffered for generations under the repression of dictatorship,” (CANF, Mission). CANF also contributed money through PACs such as Free Cuba. The establishment of CANF was just the beginning of the importance of Cuban-Americans

Another key consideration of policy during Reagan's presidency was the issue of the Cold War. With tense relations between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, Cuba’s close relationship with the USSR only further complicated relations between the U.S. and Cuba. According to Haney and Vanderbush, “The Reagan administration and

CANF agreed that leftist governments in Central America and the Caribbean needed to be confronted vigorously, both those that already existed, as in Cuba and Nicaragua and those that might come to power, as in El Salvador,” (Haney and Vanderbush

2005, 53). Due to the lack of Congressional support for the drastic changes that

Reagan wanted to implement, in regard to Cuba, there was not any substantial change to Cuban policy during his presidency.

George H.W. Bush

When George H. W. Bush Came into office, the Cold War was finally winding down. Despite the end of the Cold War, there was still a strong anti-Castro

22 sentiment among the majority of Cuban-Americans. Bush was able to greatly benefit from the Cuban-American influence in politics when he was first elected in 1988.

Haney and Vanderbush say that “Those who wished the United States to retain -- and event tighten -- its embargo of Cuba could point to Bush’s close political and fundraising ties to CANF as evidence that he was with them,” (Haney and

Vanderbush 2005, 74).

Towards the end of Bush’s term, Congress proposed legislation that would drastically change U.S.-Cuban policy. Daniel Fisk explains that this legislation, entitled the Cuban Democracy Act (CDA), was the result of two key changes in the political environment. The first change was the idea that there was ongoing

“frustration with the George H.W. Bush Administration's ‘lack of a proactive policy to hasten the downfall of the Castro regime and to promote a peaceful, orderly transition to democracy’,” especially among members of Congress, (Fisk 2010, 75).

The second major change at this time, was the increasing power of Cuban-Americans in politics, as this bill “also reflected the growth of a politically-active Cuban-

American constituency, which worked with Congressman Torricelli and other

Members of Congress on the legislation [CDA],” (Fisk 2010, 75).

Due to the pressure put on George H.W. Bush during the campaign, especially because of Clinton’s support of the CDA, he ended up signing the CDA into law in

1992. By the time Clinton came into the White House, the CDA had already added a variety of additional restrictions in regard to the economic aspect of Cuban policy.

Some of these restrictions included the blocking ships that have entered Cuban ports from entering the U.S. for 180 days. The policy also stated that countries that trade with Cuba will be in danger of not getting aid from the U.S. Both of these new

23 regulations expanded the U.S. economic blockade to an international level, discouraging other countries from trading with the country of Cuba.

Bill Clinton

When the CDA was first presented, Bush was hesitant to support it. However, because the CDA was proposed during an election year, the upcoming election played a key role in Bush’s eventual decision to back the legislation.

Bill Clinton’s approach to the CDA was another reason that Bush eventually had to change his stance on the policy. According to James Petras, “During the 1992 presidential election campaign, the Democratic candidate Bill Clinton not only signaled his complete support for continuing this strategy but also his determination to further tighten pressures on the Cuban economy,” (Petras 1996, 269). As part of

Clinton's campaign strategy, he endorsed the Cuban Democracy Act, which strengthened the economic embargo against Cuba. Petras says that while, “the Bush

White House, which had been at least as zealous as the Reaganites in prosecuting the bilateral, regional and global economic war against Cuba, was initially reluctant to support the CDA,” Clinton was more than willing to speak out in favor of the bill,

(Petras, 1996, 270). Clinton’s support of CDA is likely reflective of his attempt to gain larger support from the Cuban American vote and his understanding of the influence of Cuban-Americans in politics at this time.

During Clinton’s second term, another key policy was signed into law, the

Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (Libertad) Act of 1996, also known as the

Helms-Burton Act. This act included another series of restrictions on Cuba meant to knock Fidel Castro out of power. Originally Clinton “opposed the bill because it would punish foreigners doing business with Cuba, and was therefore bitterly

24 resented by US allies and trade partners,” (William Leogrande 1997, 212). After two civilian planes were shot out of the sky by Cuba near Florida however, Clinton ended up signing the Helms-Burton or LIBERTAD Act into law.

The Helms-Burton Act brought about a series of changes that are key to understanding U.S.-Cuban policy, but one of the most important aspects of it has to do with the embargo, and which branch of the government has the ability to end it.

Section 204 of the act states that, “Upon submitting a determination to the appropriate congressional committees under section 203(c)(1) that a transition government in

Cuba is in power, the President, after consultation with the Congress, is authorized to take steps to suspend the economic embargo of Cuba and to suspend the right of action created in section 302 with respect to actions thereafter filed against the Cuban

Government, to the extent that such steps contribute to a stable foundation for a democratically elected government in Cuba.” (The Cuban Liberty and Democratic

Solidarity Act, (1996)) This means that to even suspend the embargo, the president must work with Congress, and the President no longer has the power to end the embargo. Instead, they must do so with consultation from the Congress.

George W. Bush

George W. Bush had many connections to the Cuban-American community by the time he ran for president. He had close ties with many conservative Cubans in

Florida, where his brother Jeb Bush was the governor and George W. Bush looked to maintain the strong percentage of Cuban voters who voted Republican previously

(about 82% Republican in 2000) (Leogrande 1997). During his initial presidential campaign, Bush received almost 115,000 dollars from Cuban Americans, (Haney and

Vanderbush 2005, 131).

25 Much of Bush’s policy towards Cuba reflected the support he received from this group. He surrounded himself with a large number of conservative Cubans as he,

“appointed more Cuban Americans to senior positions than any president before him,” (LeoGrande 1997, 346). Despite the opportunity for Congressional support of the end of the Cuban Embargo, Bush, much like his predecessors took a hard line on

U.S.-Cuban relations.

Bush’s foreign policy was rooted in the fact that his administration was

“convinced that stepped up economic pressure and aid to Cuban dissidents would collapse the regime despite fifty years of experience to the contrary, Bush’s foreign policy team had no interest in dialogue with a government they were confident they could eliminate,” (LeoGrande 1997, 345). While the Bush administration did not bring about any drastic policy changes, he did push to restrict travel to Cuba even further. LeoGrande said, “a key element of Bush’s policy was to curtail travel from the United States in order to reduce the flow of hard currency to the Cuban government.” During Bush’s presidency “travel to Cuba, both legal and illegal, had been growing since the end of the Cold War. By most estimates, the total number of

Americans visiting annually was 150,000 to 200,000,” leading the administration to seek ways to cut down on U.S. travel to Cuba, (LeoGrande 1997, 355). The majority of changes made under the Bush administration had to do with decreasing what was called “people-to-people” travel to Cuba. Under these permits, which had been initiated by Bill Clinton, Americans were able to travel to Cuba as part of a cultural exchange. Eventually in March of 2003, Bush completely ended people-to-people visas.

26 Obama’s Cuban Policy: Importance of Cuban-Americans during elections

During his first campaign, Obama had to be particularly careful in his approach to US-Cuba policy due to the continued importance of Cuban-American

PACs such as the U.S.-Cuba Democracy PAC, and the importance of the Cuban-

American vote. It was estimated that USCD in 2008 had spent more than 700,000 dollars to elect federal candidates (Open Secrets, 2019). According to Daniel P.

Erikson, “during his presidential campaign, Obama had hewed to a carefully calibrated line on Cuba policy that rested on three central pillars: support for allowing

Cuban Americans to visit and send money to relatives in Cuba, openness to greater dialogue with the Cuban government, and adherence to the U.S. embargo,” (Erikson

2008, 102).

The results of the 2008 elections showed potential generational differences in opinions of U.S.-Cuban relations. While John McCain maintained the Republican stronghold within the Cuban-American community, securing 65% of the vote,

Obama’s 35% was record-setting among Democratic nominees for president. Of the votes Obama got, 55% came from voters under the age of 30. Obama’s success among Cuban voters was another factor in his eventual willingness to revise U.S.-

Cuba policy.

State of U.S. Cuba Policy and Obama’s first term

When Obama first came into power, he believed that Bush had greatly isolated

America from a variety of countries throughout the world. According to Hals Brands,

“from Obama’s perspective, the combination of the Iraq War, the harsher aspects of the war on terror, and the sometimes Manichean ethos of Bush’s post-9/11 statecraft had alienated too many international observers and foreclosed too many diplomatic

27 opportunities,” (Brands, 2017, 57). This led to the aspect of Obama’s strategy which involved “doubling down on diplomacy with friends and rivals alike,” (Brands 2017,

57).

Starting in 2008 when Obama was elected, there were slow incremental changes to US-Cuba relations including the lifting of restrictions on family travel and allowing remittances to be sent to Cuba. This change was one part of Obama’s diplomatic strategy of increased diplomacy with “friends and rivals alike.” However, the majority of changes to U.S.-Cuba policy did not occur until Obama’s second term.

Obama’s Second Term

In early 2014, Obama then in his second term, announced that he planned on opening relations with Cuba. The announcement was taken with much speculation due to the ever-changing negotiations between the countries and the high probability of breakdown in coming to a final agreement.

At this point, there were a large number of incentives for an agreement between the two countries, one of the largest being the potential for economic growth both in Cuba and the U.S. By the time that Obama was president, it was predicted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that the embargo “currently costs the American export market at least 1.2 billion per year,” (M. Shifter 2015, 103). The Cuban government, on the other hand, claims that the embargo has cost their country as much as $116 billion since 1960 (Shifter 2015).

By the time Obama had officially entered the White House, Cuba had undergone a variety of changes that allowed for easier and more justifiable changes in

U.S. Cuba relations. Fidel Castro had officially turned over his presidency to Raúl

Castro in 2006, after increasing health issues, and by 2008 Raúl was officially the

28 President of Cuba. Fidel had never had an interest in negotiating with the U.S. and even after he left the presidency, he was a vocal opponent of a new relationship with the U.S. After Obama’s visit in 2016 Fidel published an open letter in the Gránma, the

Cuban state newspaper, stating that “Nobody should be under the illusion that the people of this dignified and selfless country will renounce the glory, the rights, or the spiritual wealth they have gained with the development of education, science and culture.” (Fidel 2016) At this point, power had already been transferred to Raúl and

Fidel no longer played as important of a role in the ruling of the Communist Party of

Cuba, so talks continued despite Fidel’s disapproval.

With the change in power, there were certain reforms that President Raúl

Castro created that also helped incentivize the U.S. reconsideration of their relations with Cuba. When Raúl came into power in 2008, there was the creation of a private sector economy in Cuba, and that paired with increased internet access throughout the island allowed for an opportune moment for the U.S. to re-engage with Cuba and their economy. According to Shifter, “The betting of the Obama administration is that the opening and engagement -- and the accompanying influx of US products, tourists and media -- will over time, help ‘empower’ Cubans and bolster a new generation that is seeking greater economic and political reforms,” (Shifter 2015, 104).

Obama was well aware of the fact that the only branch of government that could lift the Cuban embargo was the Congress. Despite this, he stated that if “you’ve done the same thing for 50 years and nothing has changed, you should try something different if you want a different outcome,” (Obama, 2014) and later said that “the best way to advance American interests and values and the best way to help the Cuban people improve their lives is through engagement: by normalizing relations between our governments and increasing the contacts between our peoples,” (Obama, 2016).

29 The original statement of changes

Obama’s first official statement on the changes of U.S-Cuba policy originally happened during December of 2014. This was over two years before there was any actual policy change. Obama stated that “we will end an outdated approach that, for decades, has failed to advance our interests, and instead we will begin to normalize relations between our two countries. Through these changes, we intend to create more opportunities for the American and Cuban people and begin a new chapter among the nations of the Americas,” (United States, 2014). Obama referenced the fact that the

U.S. has had continued relations with other countries with other Communist countries, such as China. Obama went on to state that “neither the American, nor

Cuban people are well served by a rigid policy that is rooted in events that took place before most of us were born,” (United States, 2016).

Presidential Policy Implementation

To further solidify his stance on U.S.-Cuban relations, Obama visited Cuba in

March of 2016, two years after announcing his intentions to normalize relations with

Cuba. He was the first president to visit the island since 1928. The trip signified a major change to come in U.S.-Cuba policy, and seven months later, on October 16,

2016, Obama signed into effect the Presidential Policy Directive entitled, “United

States-Cuba Normalization.” According to the directive, “under the new policy, the

United States expands and promotes authorized engagements with Cuba to advance cooperation on areas of mutual interest, and increase travel to, commerce with, and the free flow of information to Cuba,” (Obama 2016).

The policy outlines four overarching goals regarding security, enhancements for the Cuban economy, greater rights and the integration of Cuba into international

30 and regional organizations. The first steps outlined by the policy was the reopening of the embassies, both in Washington, D.C., and Cuba as well as dialogues regarding

“law enforcement cooperation, regulatory issues, economic issues, claims, and internet and telecommunications policy.” Within a year, Obama’s opening of relations and travel to Cuba had already created a drastic impact with a substantial increase in the number of Americans traveling to Cuba. During this period, the availability of internet in Cuba expanded, and Americans going to Cuba became a critical population for the expansion private sector in Cuba.

Since 2010, Cuba’s private sector has undergone a huge expansion. In 2016 the Oficina Nacional Estadística e Información in Cuba reported that there were over

500,000 registered private sector workers and of those workers 353,000 work in the service sector. According to Richard Feinberg, “favorable external shock[s] —such as the surge in U.S. tourism resulting from the liberalization of U.S. travel regulations— will expand the consumer market and bolster business revenues and profits,”

(Feinberg 2016, 154).

In the wake of the change in policy and due to the thaw in U.S.-Cuban relations, Obama ended the “Wet Foot, Dry Foot” Act (The Cuban Adjustment Act) in 2017. The act had been put in place in 1996 and allowed Cubans who came to

America to pursue permanent residency only one year after arriving, as opposed to the normal five years required.

Obama’s policy outlines changes that would be implemented by 10 different governmental organizations. They are as follows.

31 Table 3.1: Obama Policy Implementation

National Security • Coordinate and oversee the implementation of Obama’s Cuba Council policy

Department of • Formulate U.S. policy and oversee relationships with Cuba State • Support Operations of U.S. Embassy in Havana • Provide adequate staffing for Embassy • Promotion of educational and cultural exchanges • Coordinate democracy programs • Coordinate dialogues regarding migration, law enforcement, etc. • Work with U.S. Agency for International Development to create transparent democratic programming • Create coordinated efforts “to advance science and technology cooperation with Cuba” • Help to expand internet and telecommunications in Cuba

U.S. Mission to • Coordinate with the State Department the United • Oversee issues involving the UN and Cuba Nations • Identify areas of collaboration between the U.S. and Cuba • Participate in annual discussions in regards to the resolution of the Cuban Embargo

Department of • Support development of the Cuban private sector and Commerce encourage entrepreneurship • Help with environmental protection and storm prediction • Promote increased trade with Cuba • Help U.S. companies understand changes to regulation in regards to Cuba • Provide opportunities to get license for authorized exports “including to Cuban state-owned enterprises that provide goods and services to meet the needs of the Cuban people” • Discuss regulatory changes with the Cuban government • Discuss the “need for simplification of the Cuban import process” and the need for greater transparency in regards to Cuban business

Department of • Expand the relationship with Cuba, where it will be beneficial Defense • Focus especially on humanitarian assistance, disaster relief and narcotics • Address the issues of mass migration and maritime migration

Department of • Work with the Department of Justice and Cuban Government to Homeland fight “combat terrorism and transnational organized crime” Security • Develop protocols to investigate in cooperation with Cuba • Uphold the integrity of the U.S. immigration system, and facilitate lawful immigration • Address maritime and mass migration issues

Department of • Work with DHS and Cuban Government to “combat terrorism Justice and transnational organized crime” • Expand cooperation between the two countries in regards to law enforcement and information sharing

32 Small Business • Engage with Cuban government, businesses and entrepreneurs Administration • Create exchanges within areas of mutual interest • Help to formalize small businesses and grow new enterprises in Cuba

Office of the • Support the government in normalizing relations with Cuba Director of • Work with the Intelligence community to create engagement National and exchange of information with Cuba Intelligence

Department of • Cooperate with Cuba on marine protection and wildlife the Interior conservation

Trump’s Cuba Policy

When Donald Trump was inaugurated in January of 2017, Cuban-U.S. relations were the most open they had been since Castro’s rise to power after the

Cuban Revolution. According to the Miami Herald, Cuba saw “visits by Cuban

Americans and other U.S. travelers total [ed] 614,433 — a 34 percent increase,”

(Whitefield, 2017) in 2016 after Obama had lifted restrictions on travel. Two thousand and seventeen was expected to bring an even greater number of U.S. tourists in Cuba, Boston Consulting Group even predicted that there could be over two million U.S. tourists visiting Cuba in the following year.

As Obama’s presidency came to an end, many expected drastic changes to occur to U.S.-Cuban relations due to the promises that had been made by Donald

Trump during his campaign. All of Obama’s measures had been executed through executive orders and because of this, reversing the normalized relations would not be difficult for the following president, Donald Trump.

Role of Cuban-Americans in election

Throughout his 2016 campaign, Trump promised a variety of changes, the majority of which had to do with dismantling policies put in place by Obama. One of

33 the key factors that shaped Trump's stance on Cuba was the field of candidates within the Republican primary. Both Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio had support from the

Cuban-American community due to both of them being Cuban-Americans and their anti-Castro stance.

With his strong stance on reversing Obama’s Cuba policy Trump was able to pick up an estimated 54% of the Cuban American vote in the November 2016 elections (Pew Research 2016). This was a huge percentage in comparison to the rest of Latino voters, with only 26% of non-Cuban Latinos in Florida voting for Trump

(Pew Research). That being said, this percentage is relatively low when looking at previous Republican candidates’ success within the Cuban-American community in

Florida. While many Latin American voters were likely discouraged from voting for

Donald Trump due to his rhetoric throughout the campaign, Cuban-Americans continued to support candidates who look to take a hard line on Cuba. While that is starting to change with the younger generation, Cuban-Americans continue to be a key demographic for Republican candidates like Trump.

Original Statement

In keeping with his promise, Trump announced his plans to revise Cuba policy, specifically that of the previous administration, in June of 2016. He made his announcement in Miami, where over 35 percent of the population identifies as Cuban

(Miami Dade County Profiles). At the announcement, Trump used strong rhetoric saying that “many of you witnessed terrible crimes committed in service of a depraved ideology. You saw the dreams of generations held by captive, and just, literally, you look at what happened and what communism has done,” (Trump,

2017a). He also directly attacked Obama’s policy saying, “The previous

34 administration’s easing of restrictions on travel and trade does not help the Cuban people — they only enrich the Cuban regime. The profits from investment and tourism flow directly to the military. The regime takes the money and owns the industry. The outcome of the last administration’s executive action has been only more repression and a move to crush the peaceful, democratic movement,” During this speech he also announced that he was canceling the previous administration's policy (Trump, 2017a).

New Policy Implementation

Trump’s new policy, entitled “Strengthening the Policy of the United States

Toward Cuba” was released the same day as his speech in Miami. While the initial memorandum was released that day, the major changes to the policy had to be implemented by the Department of State and the Departments of Treasury and

Commerce.

The policy outlined four major changes: greater compliance with U.S. laws including the embargo and the restrictions on tourism, more accountability for the

Cuban regime regarding “oppression and human rights abuses ignored under the

Obama policy,” increased national security and greater investment in foreign policy interests of the U.S, and the empowerment of the Cuban people in regards to economic and political liberties (Trump, 2017b).

Despite the overall reversal of the previous administration’s policy, Trump did maintain the end of the “Wet Foot Dry Foot Act” as well as maintaining some opportunities to travel to Cuba. Trump’s policy did retract the previous expansion of travel to Cuba, it did so solely in the case of self-directed “travel for non-academic educational purpose,” (Trump, 2017b). This means that although self-directed solo

35 travel is no longer allowed, travel visas are still given for educational purposes, professional research or one of the 12 other categories approved for travel to Cuba.

Trump’s policy implementation, while mainly focused on reversing Obama’s policy implemented the following changes:

Table 3.2: Trump Policy Implementation

Department of • Initiate changes to regulations in regards to financial Treasury transactions with Cuba • Begin process to create regulations that adhere to “the statutory ban on tourism to Cuba”

Department of • Work with Treasury on changes to financial transactions Commerce with Cuba

Department of • Work to enforce all categories of legal travel to Cuba Transportation

Department of • Identify “entities and subentities, as appropriate, that are State under the control of or act for or on behalf of the Cuban military, intelligence or security services or personnel (such as Grupo de Administracion Empresarial S.A. (GAESA), its affiliates, subsidiaries, and successors) • Publish this list of entities and sub entities to act as a list of organizations that “disproportionately benefit” the Cuban government • Begin process to create regulations that adhere to “the statutory ban on tourism to Cuba” • Enforce requirement that educational travel is “for legitimate educational purposes” • Non-educational travel must “engage in a full-time schedule of activities that enhance contact with the Cuban people, support civil society in Cuba, or promote the Cuban people's independence from Cuban authorities” and interact with individuals in Cuba • Enforce regulation that all visitors to Cuba must keep records of the visit

The policy also specifically stated that “this memorandum supersedes and replaces both National Security Presidential Directive-52 of June 28, 2007, U.S.

Policy toward Cuba, and Presidential Policy Directive-43 of October 14, 2016, United

States-Cuba Normalization” (Trump 2017b).

36 One aspect of Obama’s policy that stayed the same was the discontinuation of the “Wet Foot Dry Foot” act. Obama discontinued this act in January of 2017 shortly before the end of his term. While a majority of Trump’s policy had to do with reversing Obama’s decisions regarding Cuba, he decided to maintain the end of the

“Wet Foot Dry Foot” act.

Another key factor of Trump’s policy was his continuation of diplomatic relations with Cuba. Trump’s policy outlined no changes to the U.S. embassy in

Havana. In September of 2017, over half of the staff at the U.S. Embassy in Havana was removed. This change occurred after what was known as “sonic attacks” in which

20 plus embassy staff members and spouses became “ill” with what the New York

Times described as “symptoms including hearing loss and cognitive difficulties,”

(Harris and Goldman, 2017). The U.S. Embassy was left with 27 staff members and

15 Cuban diplomats were expelled from the United States. This was a drastic diplomatic change, but it did not come as a part of the initial change of Cuba policy, but rather as a reactionary change following these “sonic attacks.”

Both of these policy changes led to widespread coverage, due to the long history of U.S.-Cuba policy and the importance of Cuban-Americans on the U.S.

Government today. However, the presentation of both policies varied greatly depending on the news source.

37 CHAPTER 4: METHODOLOGY

This thesis looks at two particular newspapers in order to create a comparative view of the media framing techniques used. I will look at two papers and how they chose to frame the same two policies. By looking at the same policies, I will be able to consider the differences and similarities in how these papers frame them and will also allow me to analyze why these differences may exist.

The two newspapers I chose are the New York Times and the Miami Herald.

These two papers have the potential to present the policies from the Obama and

Trump administrations from very different perspectives. The New York Times has one of the largest circulations in the U.S. The New York Times states that they have over 130 million “monthly readers” and more than 3.5 million paid subscribers.

Because of the large reach they have, they are in a really important position in regard to public opinion. The New York Times has also been considered a paper that is left- leaning, meaning that they are likely to have a very different opinion on Cuban policy than the Miami Herald.

The Miami Herald is in an area with a large population of Cuban-Americans, who are historically known to be more conservative and have often supported a strong stance against Cuba (against economic and diplomatic relations with the island).

Cuban-Americans have also long been considered a group that supports Republican candidates. This could greatly contrast with the more liberal views of the New York

Times, considering Democrats are more likely to support re-engaging in economic and political relations with Cuba. While the Miami Herald has a smaller reach as far as readership, they reach the Cuban-American population in the area, who have a lot

38 of political influence, especially in regard to U.S.-Cuba policy. For these reasons, I chose to analyze the Miami Herald as my second paper.

In order to obtain the articles necessary, I used the New York Times and

Miami Herald archives, which have archived all of the articles for the years I was looking at (2016 and 2017). With both policies, I set the dates for one day before and seven days after the policy was signed in to affect. This means that for Obama’s policy I looked at articles from October 13th to October 21st of 2016. For Trump’s policy, the article dates ranged from June 15th to June 23rd of 2017. This time period was chosen in order to capture the immediate reaction of the media to the two policy changes. The day before was also added as both policies were preceded by news coverage the day before they were actually released.

Once the date range was set the articles were found utilizing the following search descriptors; the name of the president and Cuba, Cuba, and the name of the president and the location of the announcement. This means that for Obama, the searches were: (Obama) and (Cuba), (Cuba), and (Obama) and (White House) and for

Trump, (Trump) and (Cuba), (Cuba), and (Trump) and (Miami). While the last search is different in the specific wording, both include the location of the announcement and the name of the president. Obama announced his policy from the White House and

Trump announced his policy in Miami, so they mirror each other although they are not the exact same words.

After an initial search using these descriptors, I also researched the frequency of articles from Obama’s initial announcement in 2014, to gain a greater understanding of why there was such a low frequency of articles after his policy in

2016. For this search, the same descriptors were used (Obama) and (Cuba), (Cuba), and (Obama) and (White House). These again were entered into both the New York

39 Times and Miami Herald archive. I then looked at these articles between the dates of

December 16th and December 24th, 2014 in order to get a count of the articles published articles. I choose to count these articles in order to allow for a greater understanding of the distribution of articles throughout the time that Obama’s policy was being put into place and to help clarify the reason for the low number of articles following Obama’s policy release in 2016.

Within the search, I included all news articles, letters to the editor, opinion pieces and editorials. While opinion pieces and letters to the editors do not always necessarily reflect the exact opinions of the paper, the organization makes choices when it comes to what they are publishing, and for that reason I decided that it was important to analyze these articles as well. Of all the articles that appeared within these searches, there were two indicators that I looked for. Was the actual policy change acknowledged within the article, and if it was, was it discussed in some detail or just in passing.

This second qualification was key due to the fact that some articles discussed only in passing a politicians stance on the policy, for example, the Miami Herald’s article “The Miami Herald recommends Hillary Clinton for president of the United

States” which only briefly mentions that Clinton supports Obama’s change in policy to Cuba but without any real discussion of the changes. These articles were excluded from analysis because of the lack of relevant content in regard to the framing of the issue.

At its most basic, media framing analysis is examining stories presented by the media in order to try and identify trends the choices that are made when presenting the story. In order to identify media frames, it is important to look for trends within how a story is presented, such as word choice, as well as the amount of attention

40 given to the story. In order to understand the amount of attention given to each article

I first counted how many articles were presented by the papers during the time period surrounding both policy releases.

I then examined each of these articles to see what types of words they chose as descriptors, how they presented the consequences of the policy, the types of opinions they presented (in the case of opinion pieces), and whose stories were used. For this part of my research, I used content analysis. Content analysis is how a researcher is able to “take a verbal, nonquantitative document and transform it into quantitative data,” (Johnson and Reynolds 2005, 222). For each article, I looked at I first chose

“the categories of content that are going to be measured” (Johnson and Reynolds

2005, 223). In order to choose these categories, I first tried to identify obvious trends within all of the articles. I then used content analysis to look at the frequencies of articles, generally and in the opinion section, article titles, and government descriptors. With each of these, I first identified a “category of content.” When I looked at morality framing, the category of content I looked at was government descriptors. In my general analysis of media framing, I used content analysis to look at the frequency of articles relating to the topic, U.S.-Cuba policy. I also used content analysis when considering the usage of titles. In this particular case, the title was the

“category of content.”

After looking at each content category I then chose a recording unit. For all of my articles, the recording unit was the entire article. Finally, I had to figure out what

“system of enumeration” to use for each category. A system of enumeration is how you turn analysis into a quantitative number. For all of my content analysis, I utilized frequency of each “category of content.” For the most part, this frequency appears as a whole number or an overall count of the frequency. However, in the case of

41 government descriptors, I utilized percentages to present the frequency of articles that contained each descriptor.

After reading through the articles and looking for indicators such as these there were four obvious frames employed by both papers. These frames fell under the following categories: morality framing, consequence framing, public opinion framing, and human interest framing. Entman’s fifth frame, responsibility framing, was not as commonly seen in the articles looked at, and therefore was not used for analysis.

These frames outlined by Entman were chosen because they are common overarching frames that can be seen in a wide variety of media coverage. These frames then are able to be broken down further into more specific framing techniques that have to do specifically with the issue at hand, in this case U.S.-Cuba policy.

When looking at morality framing, I looked at the usage of descriptors when discussing the Cuban Government. Both papers made conscious decisions when choosing the descriptors they used to talk about the government of Cuba, and these descriptors painted different pictures of the morality of this government.

In regards to consequence framing, I looked specifically at who the papers portrayed as the winners and losers of the two policies. Each paper presented a different point of view in regards to who is benefitting from the change in policy, and who is being hurt by the policy. These frames allowed for the papers to influence whether or not the general public viewed the policies as a positive change.

Finally, I looked at public opinion and human interest framing. The majority of this was understanding what perspectives and opinions the papers chose to print. In articles that used the stories of Cubans, did they speak to Cubans trying to leave the country, or those who chose to stay there. Likewise, I looked at who’s opinions both papers chose to publish. Did they speak with Cuban-Americans, and if so were they

42 Cuban-American’s who support the embargo, or part of the younger generation that supports the normalization of relations.

All of these frames allowed for the two papers to present two very different perspectives of the same policies, even while using the same framing techniques.

43 CHAPTER 5: ANALYSIS: FRAMING U.S.-CUBA POLICY

One of the first considerations to make when looking at the framing of the two

U.S.-Cuba policies by the media is the overall attention given to the issues. In my original search, the results turned up over 114 articles for Obama and 228 articles for

Trump. While it’s hard to identify the exact reason for the vast difference between

Obama and Trump’s coverage, there could be something to be said for the fact that

Obama’s change came towards the end of his presidency, when much of the media was focused on the elections, in comparison to Trump, who was in his first term when he released his policy. After sorting through and getting rid of irrelevant articles, for example, “Guantánamo judge approves retroactive censorship of open-court hearings”

(Miami Herald, 2016), the frequency of articles was as follows.

Table 5.1: Frequency of Articles News Source (Administration, Year) # of Articles

The New York Times (Obama, 2016) 3

Miami Herald (Obama, 2016) 14

The New York Times (Trump, 2017) 18

Miami Herald (Trump, 2017) 20

After finding a surprisingly low number of New York Times articles relevant to the change in policy put in place by Obama in 2016, I came to the conclusion that due to the nature of Obama’s policy, with the announcement of normalization coming two years prior to the actual policy, a large amount of coverage was given to the initial announcement of normalization. The numbers have been inserted below to allow for greater understanding of how the coverage was spread out, but in terms of creating an equal basis for analysis, the two time periods selected for analysis were

44 surrounding the actual release of the policy (2016) instead of the announcement

(2014)

Table 5.2: Frequency of Articles (Obama, 2014) News Source (Administration, Year) # of Articles

The New York Times (Obama, 2014) 104

Miami Herald (Obama, 2014) 58

The second consideration when looking at media coverage is the usage of titles. The title allows the audience to understand what they are about to read and can allow for the audience to have an emotion or opinion before even reading the article.

In order to try and understand what the titles portray, each title was read considering the following question: If the reader were to only read the title, what would their opinion of the policy be; positive, negative or neutral? Positive meaning supportive of the policy change, negative being against the policy change or neutral, meaning they would not have a solid opinion either way. Considering this question, the results were as follows.

Figure 5.1: Article Titles as Indicators

Neutral Negative Positive

Miam Heald (Trump)

NYT (Trump)

Miami Herald (Obama)

NYT (Obama) Newspaper andAdministration -1 1 3 5 7 9 11 13 Raw Number of Stories

Figure 5.1: This figure looks at categorizes the titles of articles based on the following question: if the reader were to read only the title, what would their perspective of the policy be, positive, negative or neutral?

45 To give an example of each type of article, the October 19, 2016, article entitled “Obama: We’ll smoke your stogies & drink your rum! But Raúl Castro just represses more,” printed in the Miami Herald would count as a negative because of the fact that it portrays Obama’s policy in a negative light and would leave the reader with the idea that Obama is supporting a repressive regime. In contrast, an article published by the Miami Herald on June 19, 2017, entitled: “We welcome Donald

Trump’s new policy” allows for readers to start the article with the thought that this policy is something good that should be “welcomed.” Finally, the article “Presidential

Policy Directive,” published by the New York Times on October 14 of 2016 would be counted a neutral title, because it does not really give the audience a preconceived notion in regards to the policy.

Looking at each policy, the Miami Herald has a much higher number of negative titles than positive, with 9 titles inferring some type of negative position towards Obama’s policy. In comparison, the New York Times had 1 positive title and

3 neutral titles for their 4 articles regarding Obama’s policy. The biggest contrast however comes when looking at the difference between the New York Times and

Miami Herald’s titles regarding Trump 2017 policy. The New York Times printed 12 different titles with some sort of negative implication towards Trump's policy, and none of the other 7 titles had any positive descriptors. The Miami Herald, while having a slightly more diverse range of titles, still came in with the largest number of titles with a positive view (8) of Trump’s policy, although they were much closer to an equilibrium with 6 titles indicating some sort of negative perspective, and 5 staying neutral. Titles are only one indicator of the position an article takes, and the content of articles are where a large portion of the media framing techniques can be found.

46 Usage of Media Frames

Despite the similar amounts of coverage by both news organizations, the purpose of the articles and the way they portrayed the two different policies varied greatly. Although both organizations utilized similar frames the way they used them led to two very different outlooks on the same policies.

The Miami Herald and New York Times both used three distinct frames that were outlined by Entman (1991). These three frames used were morality, consequences, and human-interest framing. Morality framing is used to create a sense of whether or not the policy is moral or not. Consequence framing is utilized to frame what the outcomes of a policy will be. It answers the question of what the policy change will cause and who the policy will affect. Finally, human interest framing is the usage of personal stories to create context within an issue or policy. It is utilizing specific examples within the articles, these three frames manifest themselves in ways that specifically relate to the policies released by Trump and Obama, but how these techniques are used varied in order to create different slants on the policies.

The article “In Cuba, Trump’s Reversal Could Hurt Small Businesses” published in the New York Times in 2017 is a perfect example of the usage of both human interest framing and consequence framing. The article uses personal stories of

Cubans that will be affected by Trump’s new policy, which falls under human interest framing. The article also has a strong focus on what the consequence of Trump’s policy will be on the Cuban private sector, which highlights the usage of consequence framing as well. In regard to morality framing, this article contains a variety of words used as indicators when discussing the morality of the Cuban government, including the words regime and Communist, however the article in general also highlights how the Cuban government is allowing for greater private sector activity. This is an

47 example of how morality framing can be complex to quantify, which will be discussed later in the conclusion of this thesis as well.

Morality of the Cuban Government

The U.S. has long criticized the Cuban government and used concerns over repression, lack of democracy, and human rights issues as a reason for lack of political, economic, and diplomatic engagement with the island. These issues also have a direct impact on the framing of the two policies produced. When a paper reports on the issue of U.S.-Cuba relations with the frequent use of words such as

“communism” “dictator” or even “regime” it leaves the audience with a very different perspective of the morality of a government especially in comparison to an article that utilizes words such as “government” or “president” instead. These word choices are a direct reflection of news sources’ choices when it comes to morality framing.

In order to understand how each paper presented the government of Cuba, I looked for the frequency of each of the following words: Communism, dictator/dictatorship, regime, human rights/ repression, and free/freedom. These words create a very distinct perspective in regard to the government of Cuba. For example, the usage of the word dictator creates a very specific image as opposed to the usage of a word like president or leader. Because of this, it is a good indicator of what kind of image the paper is presenting, one of a government with a president, or a communist dictatorship or regime that represses the rights of the people. Each of these descriptors when used within the context of the leadership of Cuba (for example the word free used in the context of free elections and free speech, but not free to travel to

Cuba) was counted with the following results.

48 Table 5.3: Cuban Government Descriptors (Obama) Descriptor Miami Herald New York Times

Communism 1 0

Dictatorship 7 0

Regime 5 0

Human Rights/ Repression 9 1

Free/ Freedom 4 1

When looking at these statistics, it is important to mention that the New York

Times printed significantly fewer articles about Obama’s policy than the Miami

Herald (the New York Times printed 3 articles in comparison to the Miami Herald, who published 14 articles). However, when looking at Trump’s policy change in

2017, when the Miami Herald and the New York Times published a similar number of articles, there were similar trends.

Table 5.4: Cuban Government Descriptors (Trump) Descriptor Miami Herald New York Times

Communism 7 8

Dictatorship 8 4

Regime 21 8

Human Rights/ Repression 16 6

Free/ Freedom 19 4

Looking at 20 Miami Herald articles and 19 New York Times articles that discuss Trump’s policies, the data shows that the Miami Herald was much more likely to discuss the repression of human rights by the Cuban Government and the lack of free elections or speech in Cuba. They referenced human rights and repression 16 times and freedom 19 times, as opposed to the 6 and 4 references, respectively, made by the New York Times. The word regime also appeared of 21 times in the Miami

49 Herald’s articles as opposed to the New York Times who only printed the word 8 times, often opting to use the word “government” instead.

To get a better idea of the frequency of these words in articles, I then converted each of these categories into a percentage. The frequency by percentage shows the percentage of articles in which each word showed up at least once, however there were multiple articles that had a descriptor used more than once throughout the article. I counted each article that included the particular descriptor and then divided that by the overall number of articles produced by the news source. Each article was only counted once, even if there were multiple occurrences of the word same word.

One consideration to make when looking at the usage of these descriptors, is the context of the words. In quite a few articles, these descriptors were seen within quotes, instead of written explicitly by the officer. This is a definite limitation of this research, and an important area of further research would be the consideration of the usage of descriptors by the author vs. in quotations. However, whether it’s in a quote or written by the author, these words still occur in articles and affect the audience’s perception of the issue, and the author also makes a conscious decision when choosing quotes included in articles.

50 Figure 5.2: Government Descriptors (Frequency %)

Free/ Freedom

Dictator

Regime Descriptor

Human Rights

Communism

0.00% 5.00% 10.00% 15.00% 20.00% 25.00% 30.00% 35.00% 40.00% 45.00% Frequency (%)

Miami Herald New York Times

Figure 5.3: Frequency of Gov. Descriptors by Paper and Administration

Free/Freedom

Dictator

Regime Descriptors Rights

Communism

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% Frequency (%) Miami Herald (Trump) Miami Herald (Obama) New York Times (Trump) New York Times (Obama)

In terms of percentage of articles containing these government descriptors, the

Miami Herald again was more likely to have one of these descriptors in an article than

51 the New York Times. Over 40 percent of the articles printed in the Miami Herald, about Trump’s and Obama’s policies, contained the word regime at least once.

Similarly, the word “dictator” was used in over 23 percent of the articles printed by the Miami Herald as opposed to the New York Times, where the word dictator only appeared in only 9 percent of the articles printed.

When looking at the break down by paper and administration, it seems like there is a large percentage of articles published by the New York Times that included references to a regime or human rights, however these words only occurred once in both cases. The New York Times only published 3 articles, which means that even with one usage of a descriptor, the percentage is already at 33%.

By creating an image of a repressive communist regime, the Miami Herald creates a vision of an immoral government. This then gives the audience a very particular perspective when reading about U.S.-Cuba policy. Their perspective of these relations would likely be very different if the Cuban government was described as a communist government or even more generally as the Cuban government. The idea of repression and lack of human rights appeals to people’s morals. The average person is less likely to support a relationship between the U.S. and Cuba if they view the Cuban government as immoral. By creating this perspective, one of an immoral government, the Miami Herald sets up its audience to support Trump’s discontinuation of relations and also creates a platform for disapproval of Obama’s improved relations with Cuba.

Human Interest Framing

In terms of human-interest framing, the New York Times and Miami Herald continue to portray two very different sides of the same policy change. When Trump

52 released his policy change in 2017, the Miami Herald and New York Times both released articles that included stories of how the changes of policy directly impacted

Cubans.

Hannah Berkeley Cohen and Azam Ahmed write about the impact that

Trump’s new Cuba policy will have on Cubans working in the private sector in the

New York Times article “In Cuba, Trump’s reversal could hurt small businesses.”

This article goes into the details of the lives of these Cubans and discusses both how the private sector has helped them and the long-term impacts on these Cubans. For example, one of the men in the article, Yasser Gonzalez, runs an Airbnb and “bike tour guide,” with which he is able to make $700 a month as opposed to the average monthly salary in Cuba of $20 a month. (Cohen and Ahmed, 2017) Gonzalez is quoted saying that, “‘The majority of my clients are American,’ [he said.] “With

Airbnb, I have become independent. I market and sell my own product that I have total control over,” with the article later stating “such entrepreneurial dreams were precisely the sort of change that the United States government had in mind when

President Barack Obama formally opened relations with the communist nation,”

(Cohen and Ahmed, 2017).

The New York Times used Gonzalez as one of a few examples of the direct human impact of Donald Trump’s new Cuba policy. They use a human-interest frame to try and create an understanding among the audience that the new policy is hurting hardworking Cubans trying to create a better life for themselves within the private sector, such as Gonzalez.

The Miami Herald also utilized the stories of Cubans in order to discuss the private business sector in Cuba, but it is approached from a very different perspective.

In the article “Panama offers proposal to group of stranded Cuban migrants,” Mario

53 Pentón discussed the issue of the private sector with a group of Cubans attempting to get to the United States. These Cubans were stuck living in Panama as they were migrating to the U.S. just as Obama ended the “Wet Foot, Dry Foot” Act which would have allowed for these Cubans to obtain permanent residency in the U.S. with greater ease. The article discussed how the discontinuation of the “Wet Foot, Dry

Foot” Act has impacted these Cubans and there hopes that Donald Trump would allow for more Cubans to enter the U.S.

The article also discusses the option given to them by Panama, which was to return to Cuba and be given a license to be a private business owner. According to the article, Ivo Torres who is one of the migrants “said Cubans do not migrate because of economic problems, but rather because they are ‘seeking freedom’ and ‘want to become someone in life.’ ‘The Cuban government does not value private initiatives because it wants the population to be dependent on them,’ said Torres, who also questioned whether Cuban leader Raúl Castro would allow them to become self employed,” (Pentón 2017).

The picture that Pentón creates by including the stories and perspectives of these Cuban migrants allows for a very different perspective than that of the one presented by the New York Times. While the New York Times created the picture of a growing and prospering group of entrepreneurs on the island of Cuba, Pentón presents the story of people who are trying to escape a regime that does not allow for any real entrepreneurship.

The stories used in the article printed in the Miami Herald allow for an easier justification of Trump’s policy because it allows the average American to believe that their money is not really going to the private sector, but rather to the facade of a private sector that actually just benefits the Castro regime. In comparison the New

54 York Time’s chooses to highlight the stories of successful entrepreneurs in order to create the opinion that Trump’s new policy is taking away from normal people who are attempting to make a better life for themselves.

Both of these articles utilize human interest frames to try and create the opportunity for the audience to understand the human side of the Trump policy change.

In 2014 when Obama’s policy came out, the Miami Herald also published an article with that utilized human interest framing. While the article, Cuban youths live for today because tomorrow is uncertain,” does not specifically mention Obama’s policy change, it presents a very specific negative picture of Cuba and the people living there.

Public Opinion Framing:

Another consideration made while analyzing the articles about both policies was what these news organizations chose to publish in regard to opinion pieces.

While the opinions expressed in these articles do not necessarily reflect those of the newspaper, the paper does have the power to choose what they print. Printing opinion pieces gives power to the thoughts and feelings that the author expresses. These articles can also play a key role in public opinion.

The numbers of opinion pieces printed by both organizations are as follows:

Table 5.5: Frequency of Opinion Articles Newspaper (President, Date) Frequency

Miami Herald (Obama, 2016) 3

NYT (Obama, 2016) 0

Miami Herald (Trump, 2016) 7

55 NYT (Trump, 2016) 6

While there are no outstanding trends in terms of the frequency of articles, there is a definite difference when it comes to the opinions printed in the articles.

While the New York Times printed no opinion articles in the 8-day period surrounding Obama’s policy in 2016, of all 6 opinion pieces printed by the New York

Times in the 8 days surrounding Trump’s policy, zero portrayed a positive opinion towards Trump’s 2017 Cuba policy. Each of the articles portrays a negative opinion of Trump’s policy are listed below.

Table 5.6: New York Times Opinion Article Titles: Can Trump Destroy Obama’s Legacy?

A Cynical Reversal on Cuba

Can Trump Compete With Obama on Cuba?

The United States Is Squatting in Paradise

Trump’s Imminent Cuba Problem

Trump Is Wrong to Pull Back From Cuba

While there are a variety of opinions expressed, they all present an overall negative view of Trump’s 2017 Cuba policy. For example, the article “Can Trump

Compete with Obama on Cuba?” spoke extensively about the issues of Trump’s rhetoric in regard to his policy changes “may have undermined his negotiating objectives,” (Domínquez 2017). While this is clearly a negative opinion in regard to

Trump and the changes he implemented, there are a variety of articles that use much stronger rhetoric when describing the negative effects of the new policy.

One of the most striking of these comes from the editorial board at the New

York Times. In the editorial printed by the New York Times, “A Cynical Reversal on

56 Cuba,” it is stated that “In truth, his new policy is just the latest chapter in a spiteful political crusade to overturn crucial elements of his predecessor’s legacy while genuflecting to Cuban-Americans in Miami’s exile community who helped put him in office. By now, Mr. Trump has perfected the art not of the deal but of dismantling what went before,” (Editorial Board 2017).

In contrast, the Miami Herald printed a more diverse range of opinions. While there were more opinions were represented, there were by no means equal attention given to both sides of each policy debate. In 2016 when Obama initially released his policy, the opinion articles were as follows.

Table 5.7: Miami Herald Opinion Article Titles (Obama) Cigars and Rum

Clarifying on Cuba

Obama: We’ll smoke your stogies & drink your rum! But Raúl Castro just represses more

All three of the opinion articles printed within the 8-day period looked at presented a negative view of the Obama policy. They discussed a variety of issues from property rights, to the enablement of the Cuban government by Obama. When it came to opinion articles in the 8-day period surrounding Trump’s policy, there was a lot more variety.

Table 5.8: Miami Herald Opinion Article Titles (Trump) Time to make Cuba pay for its rigidity

We welcome President Trump’s new Cuban policy

President Trump’s ballyhooed Cuba travel policy is topsy-turvy

Trump new policy shows he doesn’t really care about the Cuban people

57 The Herald Panders

Trump’s Cuba policy looks a lot like President Obama’s

Of these articles, it is important to note two things. First, the article “We welcome President Trump’s new Cuban policy” is an article published by the Miami

Herald, and penned by Florida Senator Marco Rubio (Republican), New Jersey

Senator Bob Menendez (Democrat), and Miami U.S. Representative Mario Diaz-

Balart (Republican). All three of these politicians are Cuban Americans, and another article printed by the Miami Herald states that Rubio and Diaz-Balart were a driving force behind Trump’s new Cuba policy. The opening line of the op-ed penned by these three congressmen states, “For more than 50 years, the Cuban people have yearned for real change, many preferring to risk their lives in makeshift rafts than live under an oppressive and malevolent regime. They have sought freedom from the ruthless, tyrannical dictatorship that violates their God-given rights and fears democratic values,” (Rubio, Menendez and Diaz-Balart 2017).

Throughout the article, three members of Congress continue to use this type of impactful language in order to paint the picture of a dictatorial regime and an island of people that need to be saved by the United States. In the article, they state that “his

[Trump’s] new Cuba policy will ensure that the United States truly empowers the

Cuban people instead of the dictatorship. The changes he announced will assist

Cubans struggling for liberty by ensuring that U.S. policy toward Cuba actually benefits the Cuban people,” (Rubio, Menendez and Diaz-Balart 2017). This is the only opinion piece written by a politician in both papers, and it is important to note that the Miami Herald gave these congressmen another platform for their opinions to reach the public.

58 Politicians are in a unique position in which they already have a large-scale platform available to them in order to share their opinions. The Miami Herald’s choice to allow these politicians to publish this op-ed without any form of response from somebody on a similar scale (for example another politician or prominent figure) can be viewed as a positive promotion of Trump’s policy. As previously stated, papers help guide the public view of issues and policies and publishing an article such as the one written by the congressmen, two of whom worked closely with

Trump on his new Cuban policy, guides the public view in the direction of a positive view of the policy.

The second article of note is “President Trump’s ballyhooed Cuba travel policy is topsy-turvy” written by Fabiola Santiago. While Santiago’s article presents a negative opinion of Trump’s new policy, it is not because she supported Obama’s opening of diplomatic and economic relations with Cuba. Santiago believes that

Trump’s policy does not go far enough to crack down on the Castro regime. Santiago states that Trump’s new policy, “is window dressing, a way for Trump to save face with Bay of Pigs veterans and his Cuban-American supporters, to whom he promised

‘a better deal’ than President Obama’s,” (Santiago 2017). Santiago goes on to state her grievances saying that, “there’s no reversal of Obama’s restoration of relations and engagement policy. President Trump’s fake indignation with his predecessor’s

Cuba policy didn’t go anywhere. He even kept in place the controversial rum & cigar policy. You can’t swim but you can smoke and drink — and bring back with you all you can carry,” (Santiago 2017). The important takeaway in regards to this article is that, while it does not paint a positive picture of Trump’s Cuban policy, it does support a hard line against the Cuban government and the general sentiment that Cuba is a communist dictatorship that the U.S. should not be in a relationship with.

59 One key question when looking at the opinion pieces presented by both papers is how opinion pieces fit into media framing. As stated previously, by printing these opinions it is giving them a platform they would not necessarily have. Media framing is about looking at how media chooses to present an issue. Opinion pieces tend to offer one very distinct view of an issue and therefore can play a unique role in changing public opinion.

The Miami Herald Media Company, the parent company of the Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald, boasts over one million readers a week between their two papers. This means that these opinions now have a greater reach than they would normally. When the majority of the opinion articles printed paint a positive picture of

Trump's policy or a negative picture of Obama’s policy, it carries the potential to impact public opinion.

Consequence Framing

Consequence framing, in the case of these two newspapers, is looking at how media sources choose to present the outcomes of U.S.-Cuba policies. While both papers employee this frame, clearly outlining what they believe the consequences will be of this policy, there are again differentials in what they portray these consequences to be.

When analyzing consequence framing, the important part is understanding what the paper is trying to highlight. It is possible for both papers to highlight a factual consequence, but what is really important is to understand what they choose to highlight and why they choose to look at this consequence. For example, saying that

Trump’s policy will allow for some U.S. businesses to continue their work in Cuba is factually correct. However, it is also correct to state that Trump’s policy will restrict who American businesses can work with in Cuba. With consequence framing, instead

60 of looking at which of these is correct, it is important to understand why a paper would choose to highlight one of these facts but not the other.

When looking at the articles that contained some form of consequence framing there are two considerations to be made: who is the policy impacting and is it a positive or negative impact. In all of the articles that utilized consequence framing, they presented three major groups impacted by the policies, either positively or negatively by the policy. These three groups were: Americans, Cubans in the private sector and the Cuban government.

Figure 5.4: Consequence Framing, New York Times (Trump 2017)

9

8

7

6

5

4 # of Articles 3

2

1

0 Cubans (Private Sector) Americans Cuban Government

Positive Impact Negative Impact

Of the 20 articles published by the New York Times, the negative impact of

Trump’s policy is mentioned in 8 articles, and the negative impacts affecting Cubans in the private sector was mentioned in 8 articles as well. In contrast the conversation regarding the consequences facing the Cuban government occur much less frequently.

61 By emphasizing the consequences that Trump’s policy will have on everyday people such as Cubans in the private sector and American businesses, the New York

Times is able to create a negative image of Trump’s policy. For example, in the article

“Trump is Wrong to Pull Back From Cuba” it says that, “The negative effects of turning back the clock on Cuba have been widely discussed over the past few months.

Trade, agriculture, shipping, manufacturing and tourism will suffer, along with

America’s efforts to control illegal immigration and drug trafficking. Even United

States national security could be hurt should America’s presence be ceded to a less friendly nation,” (Rena Kraut 2017). The author is telling the public that Trump’s policy will have a wide variety of negative consequences on Cubans and Americans.

This is just one example of how New York Times authors portray the negative impacts of Trump’s policy. No matter how the negative consequences are presented, the repetition of the negative impacts of this policy will help guide the reader to the conclusion Trump’s policy is bad for Americans and Cubans alike.

In contrast, presenting Trump’s policy as having negative consequences on the

Cuban government can help to create an overall positive view of his policy. These negative consequences can be viewed as playing a part in creating democracy and freedom in Cuba. This perspective comes from the idea that not investing money into the Castro regime is the first step towards promoting political and economic freedom in Cuba. Taking this into consideration, the Miami Herald seems to promote a more positive view of Trump’s policy than that expressed by the New York Times.

62 Figure 5.5: Consequence Framing, Miami Herald (Trump 2017):

12

10

8

6 # of Articles 4

2

0 Cubans (Private Sector) Americans Cuban Government

Positive Negative

The Miami Herald articles have clearly represented the negative consequences that Trump’s policy will have on the Cuban government more than anything else.

They also discuss the positive impacts that Trump’s policy will have on the Cuban private sector and the American businesses, specifically the ability of businesses to continue to make money off of relationships with Cuba. For example in the article

“What Trump’s new policy means for U.S. businesses” Mimi Whitefield states that

“the administration has said it doesn’t want to hurt American businesses that have engaged in lawful commercial opportunities with Cuba and those agreements will be grandfathered into the new Cuba policy” (Whitefield, 2017). Framing Trump’s policy in this way allows for the public to view the policy as still business friendly, while also cracking down on the Communist regime.

In contrast to the New York Times usage of consequence framing to show the negative impacts the policy will have on Americans and the Cuban private sector, the majority of Miami Herald articles chose to focus on the consequences that Trump’s

63 policy will have on the Cuban government, and the potential long term effects these changes will have on democracy in Cuba as well as the positive aspects of the policy in regards to Cuban and U.S. businesses.

Obama’s Policy- Consequence Framing:

One recurring topic within many of the articles printed by the Miami Herald is the discussion of the positive impact that Obama’s policy will have on the Cuban government, and how it is enabling the Castro dictatorship. This trend is reflected in the number of times a positive consequence is presented when discussing the Cuban government.

Figure 5.6: Consequence Framing, Miami Herald (Obama 2016) 7

6

5

4

3 # of Articles

2

1

0 Cubans (private sector) Americans Cuban Government

Positive Negative

While there is a decent amount of discussion regarding the positives of

Obama’s policy in the Miami Herald, more than anything the articles focus on the positive outcomes for the Cuban government, and how these outcomes are impacting

64 the Castro regime. This is especially true when considering the opinion articles presented by the Herald, in which two of the three articles speak about how Obama’s policy enables the Castro regime. The article “Obama: We’ll smoke your stogies & drink your rum! But Raúl Castro just represses more” presents the harshest criticism of the policy with Fabiola Santiago asking, “Is Raúl Castro becoming the new

Fulgencio Batista? Is the U.S. government again giving America’s favorite dictator oxygen to survive in exchange for Americans popping in for some business and vice a la 1950s?” (Santiago 2016).

In contrast, the New York Times does not utilize consequence framing in order to highlight the potential empowerment of the Cuban government. As a matter of fact, they do not utilize much consequence framing at all in their presentation of

Obama’s 2016 policy. While their article does discuss the ability of Americans to purchase cigars and rum, they do not speak to the potential growth of the private sector due to increased tourism, or the enablement of the Cuban government by the

Obama administration. One of the articles, Obama, Cementing New Ties With Cuba,

Lifts Limits on Cigars and Rum, states that the new policy is “aimed at easing travel to Cuba as well as trade and commerce between the United States and the island nation,” (Julie Hirschfeld Davis 2017). but it does not speak to the potential consequences that come with these changes.

With both policies, there are clear differences in the choices made when deciding how to present the consequences of the policy. While the Miami Herald tended to present a more positive perspective of Trump’s policy, with a higher number of negative consequences in regards to the Cuban government and the presentation of the positive impacts his policy will have on the average Cuban or

American, the New York Times chose to present the policy from the perspective of

65 the negative impact it would have on the average Cuban. Conversely, the New York

Times chose to ignore more of the negatives of Obama’s Cuban policy, while the

Miami Herald was more than willing to highlight the issues of enabling the Cuban government through economic investment in Cuba. Both sides used consequence framing to try and promote either a positive or negative view of the two policies. The biggest difference came in how they chose to present these policies, either as a good or bad change to U.S.-Cuba policy. Both of these perspectives are important, and it’s hard to identify which is more influential, what is more important is that a paper challenges their readers by allowing for a variety of opinions and perspectives instead of just perpetuating the ideas that their readers may already have.

In conclusion, both the New York Times and the Miami Herald differed greatly in their presentation of Obama’s and Trump’s U.S.-Cuba policy. While both papers utilized similar frames, how they used these frames allowed for two very different perspectives of the same two policies. The Miami Herald framed Trump’s policy in a better light than Obama’s, and the New York Times was on the opposite end of the spectrum, providing a much harsher view of Trump’s policy. The utilization of media framing by these papers gave two audiences, New York Times and Miami Herald readers, a very different perspective of the same issue.

66 CHAPTER 6: DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

This thesis explored the different frames used by news media in the presentation of two different U.S.-Cuba policies. Looking at the usage of media frames in the New York Times and the Miami Herald one day before and in the seven-day period following the release of both policies, there were distinct variations in the usage of media frames.

When comparing frames used by both the New York Times and the Miami

Herald, there are some obvious differences in choices. While both papers chose to utilize similar frames the way they employed these frames to guide public opinion varied drastically. While both papers feature regime descriptors, discussion of the outcomes of both policies, a wide variety of opinion articles, and the usage human- interest framing, there are choices made by both papers that create very different perspectives of the same policies.

The Miami Herald continuously framed Cuba-U.S. policy in a way that would help create a platform for their audience to be in opposition to Obama’s renewed relations with Cuba, and in favor of Trump’s decision to end this normalization. They repeatedly utilized descriptors that presented the Cuban government as a dictatorial communist regime that repressed human rights. They also included stories from

Cubans, utilizing these personal stories to create an image of how the Cuban government treats its people, and a wide variety of opinion pieces that supported this sentiment. The influence of the Cuban-American community seemingly played a large role in the opinion expressed by the Miami Herald. There are a large number of

Cuban-Americans that write for the Herald, and although there does seem to be a generational change in progress in regarding U.S.-Cuba policy within the community, the voices of Cuban dissenters continue to play a key role. Pieces by authors such as

67 Fabiola Santiago, and congressmen Marco Rubio, Bob Mendez, and Mario Díaz-

Balart give a voice to the older generation of Cuban-Americans who maintain that an embargo is the best solution to U.S.-Cuba relations. Meanwhile, articles featuring the voices of younger Cuban-Americans, who even the Miami Herald admits now are more open to Cuba-American normalization, are nowhere to be found, a seemingly glaring omission.

In stark contrast, the New York Times has created the opposite situation. Their usage of stories from Cubans in the private sector looks to tear down Donald Trump’s policy as one that is hurting average Cuban citizens. While the Miami Herald does show a minimal amount of variation in opinions printed, the New York Times did not print a single opinion piece support Trump’s 2017 Cuban policy. No matter the view on the policy, it is hard to not view this as a choice that will greatly impact the views of their audience. By presenting only one side of the story, the New York Times creates a view of the policy in which Trump is hurting the average Cuban citizen, tearing apart Obama’s policies just to show his disdain for the former president, and doing nothing to create real political change in Cuba. This is a very specific picture that is being presented to the New York Times three million plus subscribers. That being, said the New York Times coverage of Obama’s 2014 policy was probably the closet to unbiased coverage of a U.S.-Cuba policy. This finding, however, likely has less to do with the change in the bias of the paper, and more to do with the small number of relevant articles. Two of the articles reported mostly factual information and the third article was just an article with the entirety of the policy and a short informational blurb. During this period, there were no opinion articles printed and generally speaking the New York Times did not use any of the identified frames. The pool of articles during this period however, show a lack of coverage regarding the

68 policy change and if there had been a greater selection of articles, there would have likely been a more obvious bias.

The differences in these frames are important to understand because media framing has a direct impact on public opinion. The news we consume helps us to understand the world around us, and the media impacts not only what we think about current events, but also how much we think about events. One of the considerations to make when trying to figure out how to be the smartest consumer of media, is looking at what media we chose to consume. Consumers tend to consume news from sources that lines up with their ideology. For example, a 2014 Pew Research Center report stated that 47% of conservatives interviewed stated that Fox News was their main source for news, and that 88% of republicans trust Fox News as a reliable source. On the opposite side, liberals are more likely to “rely on a greater range of news outlets, including some – like NPR and the New York Times– that others use far less,” (Pew

Research 2014). All this to say that it is likely that many of the readers that likely already have some opinion which will be reinforced by the perspectives presented by both papers. This is just another reason that having a variety of views presented is important when trying to find the truth of any issue. While it may be a big ask to have every news source eliminate outside bias, including advertisers, corporate interests, and organizations which contribute to profits for companies, we as consumers do have the option to pick and choose what we read. If the general public is willing to look at more than one perspective than we as an audience may be able to get closer to the unbiased truth, even if the news media isn’t able to provide stories without a slant.

By utilizing certain framing techniques papers help their audience understand U.S.-

Cuba policy from a certain vantage point. They make choices in how they present these policies, and these choices can directly impact how the public views these

69 policy changes. U.S.-Cuba policy continues to be a contentious and important issue for U.S. foreign policy, and by presenting these policies a certain way, the media is able to impact how their audience understands the issues. This then can affect how people react to these policies, how the public votes, and the overall public understanding of foreign policy, and specifically U.S.-Cuba relations.

This issue goes beyond just the issue of U.S.-Cuba policy as well. As consumers, the more that we consume one media source, or media sources that align only with our pre-existing beliefs, the more biased our understanding will be as well.

As previously discussed in the literature review, framing can affect everything within the realm of politics including healthcare, immigration, and foreign policy among other issues. The average consumer of media doesn’t have the context to understand these issues by themselves. There is a need for outside resources to understand what policies mean for everyone. The more that the public is willing to take the time to consume multiple sources from different sources, the better the understanding of our political world will be.

In regard to my research, there are still many questions that could be addressed. One question that could be considered is how the Cuban news chose to cover both policy changes and did any of their framing techniques reflect those examined in this thesis? Another question would be how the framing of Trump’s policy changed after the health issues occurred at the U.S. embassy in Havana? Did either paper change their position after this incident, or did they maintain the same framing techniques? Another key question would be to what extent is this framing indicative of the overall bias of the paper? The Miami Herald officially endorsed

Hillary Clinton in 2016, but they tend to take a more conservative stance in regard to framing U.S-Cuba policy. Is this the one issue they tend to lean right on, or are they,

70 generally speaking, a newspaper with a more conservative bias? Another important question is how did the framing of Obama’s original statement of U.S.-Cuba relations in 2014 differ from what was seen in 2016 and 2017?

This leaves the final question of what the truth is about U.S.-Cuba policy.

With the amount of bias in the media today it is hard for Americans to find the truth about policies without reading it for themselves. Even then policies are filled with political jargon and the average American is not trained to read and understand the political policy. This is why unbiased journalism is more important than ever before.

This leads to the complicated question of how we get to unbiased journalism.

The issue of sensationalized news, and the importance of money in the world of journalism is likely one of the biggest factors that needs to be addressed. While we are lucky to live in a country with a high degree of free press, media bias in an issue we face every day. Part of living in a capitalist society is the issue or money and the important role it plays. News organizations need money to function, and in order to get monetary support they need a large audience. Sensationalized news is a way to attract a large number of readers or viewers, and as long as news organizations are able to be swayed by organizations or advertisers with a large amount of money, truly unbiased journalism is off the table. Which is why it’s more important than ever that as a population we need to arm ourselves with the truth and demand for more unbiased media.

As the world continues to change, the media is our liaison to these changes and in order for this to work well, the media needs to stay as unbiased as possible. At the same time, it also on the American public to be willing to address media bias and look at multiple sources in order to understand the reality of the issues our country faces today.

71

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76 APPENDIX A: ARTICLES FOR ANALYSIS

Obama:

Davis, J. H. (2016, October 14). Obama, Cementing New Ties With Cuba, Lifts Limits on Cigars and Rum. The New York Times.

Davis, J. H. (2016, October 15). Obama Moves to Further Ease Cuba Embargo. The New York Times.

Fernández, A. (2016, October 18). Cuba suspends new licenses for private eateries and warns of tighter control. Miami Herald.

Garcia-Bengochea, J. (2016, October 20). Clarifying on Cuba. Miami Herald.

Izquierdo, Y. (2016, October 16). Cuban youths live for today because tomorrow is uncertain. Miami Herald.

Mazzei, P. (2016, October 16). Miami-Dade GOP warmly greets Pence. Miami Herald.

Ordoñez, F. (2016, October 19). House Speaker Ryan: We're going to keep embargo against Cuba. Miami Herald.

Ordoñez, F. (2016, October 18). Can a challenge to Obama's Cuba policies succeed? Miami Herald.

Presidential Policy Directive on Cuba. (2016, October 14). The New York Times.

Santiago, F. (2016, October 19). Obama: We'll smoke your stogies & drink your rum! But Raúl Castro just represses more. Miami Herald.

Torres, N. G. (2016, October 19). Havana lashes out against Obama directive on friendlier Cuba policy. Miami Herald.

Vietes, R. A. (2016, October 19). Cigars and Rum. Miami Herald.

Wallace, J. (2016, October 14). Murphy breaks barrier on U.S.Cuban relations in Rubio challenge. Miami Herald.

Weissenstein, M. (2016, October 20). U.S. disease specialists visit Cuba. Miami Herald.

Whitefield, M. (2016, October 15). American Airlines' flights to Cuba far from full. Miami Herald.

Whitefield, M. (2016, October 14). Doing business with Cuba: Some success but pace is slow. Miami Herald.

Whitefield, M. (2016, October 15). Obama moves to maintain his Cuba policies. Miami Herald.

77 Trump:

E. (2017, June 16). A Cynical Reversal on Cuba. The New York Times.

Azam, A. (2017, June 19). Cuba Foreign Minister Calls Trump's New Policy a 'Grotesque Spectacle'. The New York Times.

Baker, P. (2017, June 23). Can Trump Destroy Obama's Legacy. Miami Herald.

Burnett, V. (2017, June 25). A Tighter Grip on Travel to Cuba. The New York Times.

Cohen, H. B., & Azam, A. (2017, June 16). In Cuba, Trump's Reversal Could Hurt Small Businesses. The New York Times.

Cornelius, W. A. (2017, June 20). Trump's Reversal of U.S. Policy on Cuba. The New York Times.

Cornelius, W. A. (2017, June 20). Trump's Reversal of U.S. Policy on Cuba. The New York Times.

Davis, J. H. (2017, June 16). Moving to Scuttle Obama Legacy, Trump Will Crack Down on Cuba. The New York Times.

Davis, J. H. (2017, June 16). Trump Reverses Pieces of Obama-Era Engagement With Cuba. The New York Times.

Domínguez, J. I. (2017, June 27). Can Trump Compete with Obama on Cuba. The New York Times.

Fernández, A. (2017, June 15). The Cuban visa business: Murky but profitable. Miami Herald.

Harris, A. (n.d.). Cuba tweets from South Florida Politicians. Miami Herald. Retrieved June 16, 2017.

Hiaasen, C. (2017, June 25). Trump new policy shows he doesn't really care about the Cuban people. Miami Herald.

Karp, K. (2017, June 22). The Herald Panders. Miami Herald.

Kraut, R. (2017, June 16). Trump is Wrong to Pull Back From Cuba. The New York Times.

Londoño, E. (2017, June 16). The United States is Squatting in Paradise. The New York Times.

Mazzei, P. (2017, June 16). Inside Oval Officec, Rubio, Diaz-Balart pushed president to tighten policy. Miami Herald.

Pentón, M. J. (2017, June 18). Panama offers proposal to group of stranded Cuban migrants. Miami Herald.

78 Putney, M. (2017, June 21). Trump's Cuba policy looks a lot like President Obama's. Miami Herald.

Robles, F. (2017, June 17). Cuban Exiles in Miami Split Over U.S. Policy Shift. The New York Times.

Rubio, M., Menendez, B., & Diaz-Balart, M. (2017, June 19). We welcome President Trumps' new Cuba policy. Miami Herald.

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Time to Make Cuba pay for its rigidity. (2017, June 16). Miami Herald.

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79 AUTHOR’S BIOGRAPHY

Anna Foster is graduating from the University of Maine with a degree in international affairs, a concentration in comparative politics, and a minor in Spanish.

While on campus she worked at the school newspaper, the Maine Campus as a copy editor and interned at the Office of International Programs. She is also a member of Pi

Sigma Alpha, the National Political Science Honor Society. She spent the 2017-2018 academic year studying at the University of Havana in Cuba and Charles University in the Czech Republic. Upon graduating, she will move to Denver, Colorado where she will work with refugee and asylum seekers. In the future she hopes to attend graduate school in either international development or higher education.

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